Sharp County record., 1878-11-14
THE GREAT PLAGUE IN LONDON.

The great plague of London in 1865
forms climax nthe history of diseases.
1t seemed to spend its Jury in one fierce
effort. 1t was to come no more. Gen.
turies have passed, and still the fatal
scourge that ragged without limit, with
out resistance, almost to the destruction
OF the population of vast capital, has
wholly vanished before some inscruta-
BILE law, some change of habits, inn
prOyement in morals and manners.
Often before 1865 it had prevailed in
London and England almost with
Oriental severity, and had slowly made
its way over Western Europe, devour-
ing generation in its passage. 1t be-
gan usually in Egypt and Syria, reach
ed Constantinople, overran the Cont
nent, desOlated Amsterdam and Paris,
covered England with dismay. 1t is
curious to notice how all these violent
and loathSome diseases are born and
nourished in the East, ride slowly west
ward, decimate, destroy, are the poison
Gus gifts of a decaying civilization.
The Black Death in 194S is the most
fearful of all. 1t came from the East
over medieval Europe, Staying whole
cities full of people, laying waste and
silent the open country, knocking at the
cottage and the palace gate. The hui
man race, in the words of the chroni-
clers, seemed about to disappear; cities
as large as New Orleans were nearly de-
serted; districts of fertile country fairer
than Mississippi were tenanted once
more by wild beasts. Half the people
of Europe, it was estimated, died. 1t
was as if 100000 of the inhabitants of
Boston had perished in few months,
100000 in New York. We have
nothing in modern times to approach
the violence of these ancient plaques;
men have multiplied, disease diminishes.
1t is not difficult to fancy the horror
that settled upon the survivors, the ter
rors of the lonely cities, the forsaken
streets, the depopulated, desolate coun-
try; the sudden outbreaks of fierce re-
ligious madness that often followed;
the fagellants, white penitents, fanatics,
contrition, despair; or the wild revelry
that sometimes sprung up in its midst,
the shouts of riotous merriment min
Cling with groans and tears.
1t was plague of this kind that came
upon London in 1865, so fearful that it
could only seem judgment from
above. So it appeared to the rigid
Puritans and republicans who five years
before had welcomed back Charles III
and his Cavaliers with dissembled glad
ness, with a compromise with evil they
could never atone for. London had been
a Puritan city, strict in outward morals,
rigid in doctrine, industrious, gloomy
the return of the Cavaliers had filled it
with foreign vices, frivolous lightness,
gross impnrity. The King had brought
with him a gay, mad, miserable train !;
every thing rational was neglected; he
was the COmus of "rabble rout," and
many, with Milton or Defoe, looked up
on the plague as the judgment of heaven
upon the misdeeds of their rulers. Lon
don in the winter and spring of 1664-65
was crowded with people; in the West
End the wealthy and noble gathered
around Westminster and Whitehall, in
the city and the eastern suburbs
trade had revived. The river was full
of ships, the streets filled with an over
flowing tide of life. Defoe has painted
with his realistic pen the slow rise of
the pestilence, the first alarm, the hopes,
the fears, the progress of the scourge
secretly and then openly, the flight OF
the citizens, the horrid gloom, the
death-cries, the yawning graves, crime,
woe, the decline of the pestilence, the
boundless joy of the survivors, the re-
turn of theimpenitent court. For a long
time it had been known in London that
the plague had been raging on the Con-
tinent. brought from the East by some
unlucky trader; but in the winter OF
1864 only few cases had been noticed
in the capital, yet these were enough to
excite deep anxiety. Men watched
the reports of the deaths in the differ
ent parishes eagerly. "We had no such
thing as printed newspapers in those
days." says Defoe, "to spread rumors
and reports Of things, and improve
them.n But the rumor of the approach
of the disease had already reached Lon
don. In November two men, said to
be Frenchmen, died in Drury Lane; the
physicians declared they had died OF the
plague; and the weekly bill of mortali-
ty was printed: "Plague, 2; parishes
infected, L. Another died in Decem-
ber. For six weeks no other death oc-
Cured; then in February one happen
cd. 1t was noticed, however, that the
number of deaths around st. Giles's had
greatly increased; it was whispered that
the plague was there, and few
cared to venture through Drury Lane.
But the winter came on sharp
and bleak, and seemed to kill the dis,
L