I feel like I am shipwrecked in my own apartment, a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. Perhaps with slightly more food on my disposal than the hero of Daniel Defoe’s novel, but limited to movement within the borders of my municipality.
By chance, I noticed that Defoe also wrote a novel,
A Journal Of The Plague Year, describing the events of the Great Plague of London in 1665. Since he was born in c. 1660 it is believed that the source for the novel were his uncle’s journals.
The type of plague they were dealing with was a bubonic plague caused by a bacterium which was transmitted by a bite of an infected flea, or direct contact with infected tissue or exposure to the cough of another human.
Bubonic plague hasn’t been eradicated yet. If your plan was to escape the current pandemic by flying to Madagascar. Don’t, it’s among the countries with the greatest recorded number of Bubonic plague cases between 2010 and 2015, according to Wikipedia.
Here’s the account on how the plague started:
“It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbors, heard, in ordinary discourse, that the plague was returned again in Holland ; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet ; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus, It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.”
We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days, to spread rumors and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants, and others, who corresponded abroad, and from them were handed about by word of mouth only ; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the government had a true account of it, and a several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over, but all was kept very private, Hence it was that this rumor died off again, and people began to forget it, as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true ; till the latter end of November, or the beginning of December, 1664, when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long-acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury-lane.”
From then on Dafoe describes how the spread of the plague picked speed. He starts tracking the spread by the increase in the amount of weekly burials in the local parish compared to the average numbers of burials they would expect. Within five weeks the increase was almost two-fold above the average, so people started to panic. In coming months, with warmer weather, the number of people dying of plague started to fall. If I got it right, because the local authorities started to under report the number of deaths, attributing deaths from plague to spotted fever or something else, or not reporting deaths at all.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, those who could afford, mostly rich people, started fleeing London in droves. Heading for the countryside. In order to be able to travel past a roadblock or stay at an inn in another town, you needed a certificate of health, which was issued at Lord Mayor office. Dafoe, or his uncle, considered getting such certificate. Pondering whether he should resolve to stay in London, or shut up his house and flee.
“I had two important things before me : the one was the carrying on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my life n so dismal a calamity, as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole city ; and which, however great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people's, represented to be much greater than it could be.”
In the end, Dafoe left it to a flip of a coin to decide whether he should stay or flee the plagued city… kind off.
"Add to this, that turning over the Bible, which lay before me, and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily serious upon the question, I cried out, " Well, I know not what to do; Lord, direct me! " and the like; and at that juncture I happened to stop turning over the book, at the 91st Psalm, and casting my eye on the second verse, I read to the seventh verse exclusive ; and after that, included the loth, as follows:
"I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge, and my fortress, my God, in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust : his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day : nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,"
I scarce need tell the reader, that from that moment I resolved that I would stay in the town…"
Starting with
Mindy Robinson, here are some other Robinson’s I found at Mr. Skin. Check it out two -week free membership for quarantined people.
