History of the Plague of London by Daniel Defoe

Author:Daniel Defoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ozymandias Press
Published: 2018-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to the report which was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I have said, I cannot confirm of my own knowledge, namely, that the market people carrying provisions to the city never got the infection or carried it back into the country; both which, I have been assured, has been false.

It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation, though not to a miracle; that abundance went and came and were not touched; and that was much encouragement for the poor people of London, who had been completely miserable if the people that brought provisions to the markets had not been many times wonderfully preserved, or at least more preserved than could be reasonably expected.

But these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually, for the towns about them were really infected. And they began to be afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such things as they wanted; and this pinched them very hard, for now they had little or nothing but what the charitable gentlemen of the country supplied them with. But, for their encouragement, it happened that other gentlemen of the country, who had not sent them anything before, began to hear of them and supply them. And one sent them a large pig, that is to say, a porker; another, two sheep; and another sent them a calf: in short, they had meat enough, and sometimes had cheese and milk, and such things. They were chiefly put to it for bread; for when the gentlemen sent them corn, they had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This made them eat the first two bushels of wheat that was sent them, in parched corn, as the Israelites of old did, without grinding or making bread of it.

At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near Woodford, where they had it ground; and afterwards the biscuit baker made a hearth so hollow and dry, that he could bake biscuit cakes tolerably well, and thus they came into a condition to live without any assistance or supplies from the towns. And it was well they did; for the country was soon after fully infected, and about a hundred and twenty were said to have died of the distemper in the villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them.

On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need to be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary, several families of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted their houses, and built huts in the forest, after the same manner as they had done. But it was observed that several of these poor people that had so removed had the sickness even in their huts or booths, the reason of which was plain: namely, not because they removed into the air, but because they did not remove time enough,

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