The Great Plague of London

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

The Great Plague of London

110,000 DEATHS IN TWO TRAGIC YEARS.

The Great Plague began in London in IGG4, and it ended in 16(56, after 110,000 persons had died. First there was an unnatural feeling of horror, then a shaking and trembling, then vomiting, then'coma or delirium— then death. What it was really like in a plague-stricken household (writes' Mr. C. A. Lyon in the "Sunday Express") has only been recently known by the publishing of old documents. From the first a tragic mistake multiplied the death roll. It was believed that the plague was in the air itself. And so the houses were locked up tight, and the wretches within stewed in a fetid atmosphere. Tliey might not come out. Some were quarrelsome in the last stages of the plague and raved at one another over, trifles until death settled their contention. The passers saw the little faces of children who were dying behind locked doors peering in wonderment out of the windows. There were sad cases of mothers murdering their own children.

To each little shut-in hell—and this was one of the most terrible features— abandoned women, the scourings of the streets, were sent to act as nurses. Their services might not be refused. The hags, to whom men saw their loved ones entrusted, stole the household goods and actually infected healthy members of

the family they preyed on with the plague, so that when the whole household was dead they would plunder the rooms.

In malice, those dying of the plague leaned out of their windows to breathe their contagion on to a passer-by.

The plague would not have been so bad if it had not been for the people's ineradicable love of funerals. Again and again the city forbade pompous funerals, but as often the people would not be deprived of a spectacular burial, and gathered to follow the corpse and infect one another.