A journal of the plague year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / by Daniel De Foe. Revised edition with historical notes by E. W. Brayley ... Also, some account of the great fire in London in 1666, by Gideon Harvey ... with an appendix containing the Earl of Clarendon's account of the fire. With illustrations on steel by George Cruikshank.
- Daniel Defoe
- Date:
- [1881]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A journal of the plague year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / by Daniel De Foe. Revised edition with historical notes by E. W. Brayley ... Also, some account of the great fire in London in 1666, by Gideon Harvey ... with an appendix containing the Earl of Clarendon's account of the fire. With illustrations on steel by George Cruikshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
![still be allowed to say, that if the bills of mortality said five thousand, I always believed it was near twice asi many in reality ; there being no room to believe that the account they gave was right, or that, indeed, they were, among such confusions as I saw them in, in any condi- tion to keep an exact account. But to return to my travellers:—Here they were only examined; and as they seemed rather coming from the country than from the city, they found the people the easier with them; that they talked to them, let them come into a public-house where the constable and his warders were, and gave them drink and some victuals, which greatly refreshed and encouraged them ; and here it came into their heads to say, when they should be inquired of afterwards, not that they came from London, but that they came out of Essex. To forward this little fraud, they obtained so much favour of the constable at Old-Ford, as to give them a certificate of their passing from Essex through that village, and that they had not been at London, which, though false in the common acceptation of London in that county, yet was literally true; Wapping or Radcliff being no part either of the city or liberties. This certificate, directed to the next constable, that was at Hummerton, [Homerton,] one of the hamlets of the parish of Hackney, was so serviceable to them that it procured them not a free passage there only, but a full certificate of health from a justice of the peace; who, upon the constable's application, granted it without much difliculty; and thus they passed through the long divided town of Hackney, (for it lay then in several separated hamlets,) and travelled on till they came into the great north road on the top of Stamford-hill,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21224377_0205.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
