31, confirmed an order of 1583 that those stricken by the plague be confined to their houses.

Pest-House beyond Bunhill-Fields; H.F. says that only two pest-houses were made use of (p. 156). At least five seem to have existed, two of which were hastily built during the plague, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Martin-in-the-Fields; see Bell, The Great Plague in London, 37–9. A report to the Privy Council early in 1666 remarked on the inadequacy of the existing pest-houses, the ones in Westminster and St Giles accommodating only sixty each, the one in Soho, only ninety (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665–1666, xiii).

ORDERS … 1665: the Orders of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were reprinted in 1721 in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. Defoe added the names of the Lord Mayor and the two Sheriffs. Except for slight changes, the Orders issued in 1665 were a repetition of those issued in 1646.

Examiners: these officials, sometimes called surveyors in earlier plagues, were appointed by the authorities in 1603, perhaps as early as 1578, to search out and report cases of the plague and to ensure that plague orders were observed; but see also the next note. For H.F.’s reaction to being appointed an examiner, see p. 137.

The Examiner’s Office: Walter G. Bell found no evidence of examiners appointed in 1665 to search for the plague. A few men designated by that title took over duties of parish officers, such as affording relief and assisting in burials. He maintains that Defoe’s saddler, ‘nosing out Plague in 1665 … is a figure of fiction, invented by [Defoe] out of the “Orders Conceived and published”’ (The Great Plague in London, 105–6).

Searchers: in Applebee’s Journal, 18 Nov. 1721, Defoe attributed the inaccuracy of the Bills of Mortality to both the parish clerks and the searchers. The custom of appointing ‘ancient women’ to be searchers, whose function in times of plague was to seek out the dead and report the cause of death to the parish clerks, was strongly criticized by Captain John Graunt and Defoe, among others. Defoe wrote: ‘the Searchers are a sort of old Women, Ignorant, Negligent [and] many Times the Clerks, who are not above half a Degree better Old Women than the Searchers, often supply the Searchers Office, and put the Dead down of what Disease comes next in their Heads. And in short, ’tis not one Time in many that in some Parishes any Searchers come near a dead Body’ (Lee, ii. 455).

Botch, or Purple: physicians and writers on the plague attempted to distinguish the external manifestations of the malady. The various spots, swellings, tumours were called tokens, botches, carbuncles, buboes, or blains. Kemp’s Brief Treatise describes the botch as ‘a swelling about the bignesse of a Nutmeg, Wallnut, or Hens Egge, and cometh in the Neck, or behind the Eares, if the Brain be affected; or under the Arm-pits, from the Heart; or in the Groin, from the Liver; for the cure whereof, pull off the feathers from the Rump of a Cock, Hen, or Pigeon, and rub the Tayl with Salt, and hold its Bill, and set the Tayl hard to the swelling, and it will die’ (p. 92). Tokens of the red variety ‘have often a purple Circle around them’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 39). Spotted fever, with its purple spots, might be mistaken for the plague, Boghurst warned (see Loimographia, 49).

Fire, and … Perfumes: the College of Physicians recommended fires and fumes: ‘Fires made in the Streets, and often with Stink-Pots, and good Fires kept in and about the Houses of such as are visited … may correct the infectious Air; as also frequent discharging of Guns’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 40). Cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence: ‘Some [physicians] direct to make great Fires in the Streets, as Hyppocrates did in the Plague at Athens, and burning among them sweet Odors, Spices and Perfumes, Fragrant Ointments and Compositions, whereby he freed the City from Infection’ (p. 43). Dr Philip Rose, a member of the College of Physicians in 1721: ‘you cannot imagine what a deal of Morbifick Miasmata are destroy’d or carried away by a Fire wisely managed’ (A Theorico-Practical, Miscellaneous, and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (1721), 35). See also third note to p. 148.

Shutting … House: perhaps the most extensively discussed of all preventative measures. The sequestration of the sick and anyone who had contact with them, was common practice in England from 1518.