On debt collecting in the times of plague. Daniel Defoe's account on it from A Journal of the Plague Year:
A neighbour and acquaintance of mine, having some money owing to him from a shopkeeper in Whitecross street, or thereabouts, sent his apprentice, a youth about eighteen years of age to endeavor to get the money. He came to the door, and finding it shut, knocked pretty hard, and as he thought, heard somebody answer within, but sure, so he waited, and after some stay, knocked again, and then a third time, when he heard somebody coming down stairs.
At length, the man of the house came to the door; he had on his breeches or drawers, and a yellow flannel waistcoat, no stockings, a pair of sljpt-shoes, a white cap on his head, and, as the young man said, "death in his face.”
When he opened the door, says he, " What do you disturb me thus for? " The boy, though a little surprised, replied, " I come from such a one, and my master sent me for the money which he says you know of." "Very well, child," returns the living ghost, " call as you go by, at Cripplegate church, and bid them ring the bell; " and with these words he shut the door again, and went up again, and died the same day; nay, perhaps the same hour.
Here’s
Nihan Gur from movie The Debt Collector. You can check out the clips at
Mr. Skin
