Unit 4 (From the Diary of Anne Frank)
A Journal of the Plague Year
Explain how the plague news spread and was confirmed in 1664.
A journal. A journal records events day by day. Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year tells the story of the plague in London.
The first rumour. In September 1664 people heard that the plague had come back to Holland. Some said it came with goods from Italy, others from the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean), from Candia (the old name for Crete) or from Cyprus.
News without newspapers. There were no printed newspapers then. News travelled in merchants' letters and by word of mouth. The Government talked about the plague in private, there was no proof, and the rumour died away. Think of how a rumour spreads on a family WhatsApp group today, and then fades.
The news is confirmed. Then two Frenchmen died in a house in Drury Lane, London. The family tried to keep it quiet (as some families hid illness during COVID-19), but the news leaked out. Two physicians and a surgeon examined the bodies and found the signs of plague. The deaths went into the weekly bill of mortality: the weekly list of people who died. Its first line read 'Plague 2. Parishes infected 1.'
Old words, today's English.
- whence = from where (the book's example 'whence — when' is a slip);
- whither = to where (to which place);
- discourse = talk; endeavoured = tried;
- the plague was returned = had returned; it was come = it had come;
- gotten some vent = leaked out; hence it was that = that is why.
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