A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

It mattered not from whence it came;

though it is true all the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may venture to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some weeks.

The face of London was now indeed strangely altered:

One mischief always introduces another.

I must here take further notice that nothing was more fatal to the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the visitation, made no provision for it by laying in store of provisions, or of other necessaries, by which they might have lived retired and within their own houses,

here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the people of London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction.

that the infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who they were infected by.

Men did then no more die by tale and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; ’tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without account.