Dekker’s description of them as ‘shee wolves’ is echoed by Hodges: ‘These Wretches, out of Greediness to plunder the Dead, would strangle their Patients … others would secretly convey the pestilential Taint from Sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned Miscreants from prosecuting their avaritious Purposes by all the Methods their Wickedness could invent’ (Loimologia, 8).

John Hayward: mentioned as sexton in 1673 in the Vestry Minutes of St Stephen Coleman Street (fo. 352). His death is recorded in the Register General of the same church on 5 October 1684 (fo. 188). Note that H.F.’s brother lived in Coleman Street parish.

Alleys, and Thorough-fares: in London Survey’d (1677), John Ogilby and William Morgan list Coleman Street as having eight courts and six alleys.

Garlick and Rue: in addition to these, other herbs, spices, roots, barks, flowers, and seeds were recommended: aloes, amber, ambergris, angelica, balm, bay leaves, benjamin, campana roots, camphor, cinnamon, citrine sanders, cloves, emula, frankincense, gentian, hyssop, juniper, lavender, mace, marjoram, mint, musk, myrrh, nutmeg, origanum, penny royal, rosemary, saffron, sage, sassafras, storax, tansy, thyme, wormwood. All of these may be found scattered through plague tracts as well as in the London Pharmacopoeia. The use of aromatics was supported by the tradition that Hippocrates had conquered the plague of Athens by burning aromatic spices in the streets. An occasional note of scepticism was voiced: J.V., in Golgotha (1665), wrote that ‘sweet-scented Pomanders were exploded … long since, as a costly mischief’. He attacks the excessive claims of the ‘Pomandermen’; nevertheless he commends the fumes from ‘Rhue, Wormwood, Hartshorn, Amber, Thime or Origany, Rosemary’ and a few others. Of all fumes he affirms ‘Tobacco to be the best’ (p. 24).

smoaking Tobacco: widely recommended as a preventative and fumigant. Kemp’s A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence (1665) describes it as ‘a good Fume against pestilential and infected air’. He commends it for ‘All Ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old, Men and Women, the Sanguine, the Cholerick, the Melancholy, the Phlegmatick … either by chewing in the leaf, or smoaking in the Pipe’ (pp. 46–7). It was believed that no tobacconist had died in the plague of 1665. Richard Bradley wrote: ‘it is to be remarked, that in the time of the last Plague in London that Distemper did not reach those who smoak’d Tobacco every Day’ (The Plague at Marseilles consider’d, 48–9). Among the physicians who maintained that tobacco had kept them immune were Hodges and Diemerbroeck. Pepys records (Diary, 7 June) with apprehension his first sight of an infected house, in Drury Lane: ‘It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell and to chaw, which took away my apprehension.’

Plague … chiefly among the Poor: ‘it is incredible to think how the Plague raged amongst the common People, insomuch that it came by some to be called the Poors Plague’ (Hodges, Loimologia, 15). The relationship between poverty (with its undernourishment and lack of sanitation) and disease was recognized: ‘the contagious Maladies most commonly … rage amongst a crouded and penn’d up Herd of Creatures, who by Poverty do wallow in their Dirt and Hastiness; and this being accompany’d with bad Air and Nourishment, if it has not … the full Effect to occasion and to breed a contagious Malady of it self, yet … such poor miserable People will be much more liable, and their Bodies more dispos’d to receive, harbour, and nourish the malign Atoms of a contagious Malady’ (P. Kennedy, MD, A Discourse on Pestilence (1721), 19).

Story of the Piper: the story of a drunken man interred prematurely was in circulation in one form or another as early as 1603 (in Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare); and versions of it in the seventeenth century are found in the anonymous The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie (1604) (possibly by Dekker or Thomas Middleton), in Sir John Reresby’s Memoirs, 1634–1689, and in William Austin’s The Anatomy of Pestilence, 1666). See Wilhelm von Fuger, ‘Der betrunkene Piper’, Archiv f. n. Sprachen, 202. (1965), 28–36.

London … exceeding rich: ‘Contrary to all outside appearances, the City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its liabilities were far in excess of its immediate assets, and its expenditure was constantly in excess of its income’ (T. F. Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (repr. 1951), 171; see ch. 7 of this study for the tangled financial affairs of the City and for the cost of rebuilding some of the places mentioned by Defoe). The rebuilding of public edifices to which Defoe refers was spread over eight years.

breaking in upon the Orphan’s Money: accumulated funds for the care of orphans of London citizens were controlled by the Mayor and the Corporation.