Loimographia : an account of the Great Plague of London in the year 1665 / by William Boghurst, apothecary ; now first printed from the British Museum Sloane MS. 349 for the Epidemiological Society of London ; edited by Joseph Frank Payne.

  • Boghurst, William, (1631-1685)
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Loimographia : an account of the Great Plague of London in the year 1665 / by William Boghurst, apothecary ; now first printed from the British Museum Sloane MS. 349 for the Epidemiological Society of London ; edited by Joseph Frank Payne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    17/134 (page 13)
    •«• for the first time from original sources) in Dr. Creighton's History of E2ndemics in Britain. The record shows the astonishing frequency and fatality of the disease. The authentic history of Plague in England, ending with 1666, is thus comprised within a period of about 300 years. Passing over the earlier periods we come to the 17th cen- tury, which specially concerns us. The first great epidemic of this century was the terribly destructive one of 1603. It lingered on for some years, and even in 1609 the mortality was considerable. The second great plague was in 1625, causing great mortality, but almost limited to one year. The epidemic of 1636 was less destructive, but remarkable for its long continuance, considerable mortality being re- corded every year up to 1647. After this year there was a sudden drop in the mortality, and the whole period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate was practically exempt.* A few deaths are put down every year to plague, but the average hardly exceeded fifteen per annum, and the numbers are sometimes so small that it seems doubtful whether they had any significance whatever. Up to 1664 the recorded deaths continued to become fewer, and it must have seemed as if the great terror of London was finally disappearing. At all events, no one dreamt of danger. The proximity of plague at Amsterdam in 1664, and a few sporadic cases in London at the close of the year, may have caused some persons a little apprehension; but certainly no one expected that the epidemic would begin to show it- self in May, take a sudden start in June, and produce, in * The Puritans, not unnaturally perhaps, from their point of view, con- nected these events with political changes. Each of the great epidemics marked the accession of a new king, James and Charles ; while the sudden decline coincided with the final overthrow of the Monarchy in 1648. Even Milton, pleading in 1660 for a Free Commonwealth, speaks of the frequent Plagues and Pestilences that then [in monarchical times] wasted this City, such as through God's mercy, we have never felt since. Perhaps, when leaving the city, five years later, to escape the pestilence, he may have felt confirmed in his reading of history. There are said to be extant some verses very doubtfully ascribed to Milton, in which the Plague of 1665 is spokeiTof as a divine judgment on the sins of Charles II. (Garnett's Life of Milton.)