PEST-FIELDS AND PLAGUE-PITS.
“From plague, pestilence, and famine,
Good Lord, deliver us.”
CONSIDERING that we have records of the visitation of London by direful
plagues and pestilences at frequent intervals during ten centuries, and
that these visitations always led to a mortality far in excess of the
ordinary one, it is not to be wondered at that from time to time special
burial-places had to be provided to meet the special need. In 664,
during the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, London was “ravaged by the
plague,” and from that date forward it returned again and again, causing
the kings, the courtiers and the richer citizens to be constantly
fleeing for safety into the country, until the final and awful calamity
of 1665. According to some authorities the plague has never re-appeared
since then, although according to others a few cases occurred annually
until the year 1679. But after that time, although there was a division
for “the Plague” in the annual Bills of Mortality, there were no entries
against it, and after 1703 we cease even to see the word recorded. In
early days the visitations were so ordinary that, when mentioned in the
histories of London, they are not taken much account of. Here is one
record: “The plague making its appearance in France in 1361, the king to
guard against the contagion spreading in London, ordered that all cattle
for the use of the city should be slaughtered either at Stratford on one
side the town, or at Knightsbridge on the other side, to keep the air
free from filthy and putrid smells. This regulation was certainly
wholesome; but the close dwellings of which the city then consisted,
were always fit receptacles for contagious disorders; the plague
accordingly came over, and in two days destroyed 1,200 persons.” If an
infectious disorder were to carry off 1,200 persons in two days in
London now, when the population is counted by millions instead of by
thousands, there would be a general panic, a special inquiry, and,
perhaps, a Royal Commission.
In 1349 two large tracts of land were set aside for the interment of
those who then died of the plague, and as their history is generally
well known, I will give Noorthouck’s somewhat concise account: “At
length it (a great pestilence) reached London, where the common
cemeteries were not capacious enough to receive the vast number of
bodies, so that several well-disposed persons were induced to purchase
ground to supply that defect. Amongst the rest, Ralph Stratford, Bishop
of London, bought a piece of ground, called No-Man’s-Land, which he
inclosed with a brick wall, and dedicated to the burial of the dead.
Adjoining to this was a place called Spittle Croft, the property of St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, containing thirteen acres and a rod of ground,
which was purchased for the same use of burying the dead by Sir Walter
Manny, and was long remembered by an inscription fixed on a stone cross
upon the premises. On this burial-ground the Charterhouse now stands.
There was also another piece of ground purchased at the east end of the
City, just without the wall, by one John Corey, a clergyman, for the
same use; on which spot was afterwards, in this same reign, founded the
Abbey of St. Mary of Grace, for Cistercian monks; it is now covered by
the victualling-office and adjoining houses. It was asserted that not
one in ten escaped this calamity, and that not less than 100,000 persons
died in the whole.” The next sentence is characteristic of the way in
which, as I have already said, these visitations were treated.
“Notwithstanding this sad misfortune, the city soon recovered itself,
and advanced greatly in prosperity, as will appear by a charter it
obtained in the year 1354, granting the privilege of having gold or
silver maces carried before the chief magistrate.” The translation of
the Latin inscription on the stone cross on Sir Walter de Manny’s ground
is as follows:—
“A great plague raging in the year of our Lord 1349, this
burial-ground was consecrated, wherein, and within the bounds of the
present monastery, were buried more than 50,000 bodies of the dead,
beside many others thenceforward to the present time: whose souls
the Lord have mercy upon. Amen.”
The space called No-Man’s-Land was three acres in extent and was
afterwards known as the Pardon Churchyard, being used for the interment
of executed people and suicides. It was in use long after the Cistercian
Monastery was built on the Spittle Croft. Wilderness Row, now merged
into Clerkenwell Road, marks its site, while the gardens and courts of
the Charterhouse, the Square, the site of a demolished burial-ground for
the pensioners (Sutton’s Ground), and the burial-ground which still
exists at the north end of the precincts, are all part of the Spittle
Croft and of the monastery burial-ground. There have already been
attempts to do away with the Charterhouse, to substitute streets and
houses for the old buildings, gardens, and courts, but happily it is not
so easy as it once was to tamper with land consecrated for burials, even
though that land may have been set aside 550 years ago. The
“Victualling-office,” which took the place of St. Mary’s Abbey, was
where the Royal Mint at present stands, and, if one may trust William
Newton’s plan, the abbey graveyard was where the entrance courtyard is
now.
The numbers who died in subsequent visitations must have helped not a
little to fill the parish churchyards, but it was not until the year of
the Great Plague that there seems to have been any very general
provision of extra ground, although the pest-house ground in the Irish
Field, “nye” Old Street, was consecrated in 1662, especially for the
parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.
But the plague of 1665 taxed the resources, the patience, and the energy
of the Mayor, magistrates, and citizens of London in a manner that was
unprecedented. All through that fatal summer and autumn, and on into the
commencement of the following year, did it play havoc with the people.
In August and September it was at its height. The exact number of
persons who died could not be known, for thousands of deaths were never
recorded. Bodies were collected by the dead carts, which were filled and
emptied and filled again from sunset to dawn, and no account was kept of
the numbers thrown into the pits. At any rate, between August 6th and
October 10th, 49,605 deaths were registered in the Bills of Mortality as
from the Plague, and Defoe, whose “Journal of the Plague” gives every
detail that any one can wish for, considered that during the visitation
at least 100,000 must have perished, in addition to those who wandered
away with the disease upon them and died in the outlying districts. “The
number of those miserable objects was great. The country people would go
and dig a hole at a distance from them, and then, with long poles and
hooks at the end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and then
throw the earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them.” It
is pretty certain that many unrecorded burials took place in the fields
of Stoke Newington.
London must have been a sad sight. All shows, pleasures and pastimes
were stopped; people crowded continually into the churches, where
dissenting ministers, notwithstanding the Act of Uniformity which was
then in force, occupied the pulpits of deceased or absent vicars, and
preached to the most attentive listeners; huge fires were always burning
in the streets; children were kept out of the churchyards; the city was
cleared of all “hogs, dogs, cats, tame pigeons and conies,” special
“dog-killers” being employed; and food and assistance was daily given to
the most needy; while those who could afford to do so fled into the
country, except a few devoted physicians, justices, and other helpers,
including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Craven, Monk
(afterwards Duke of Marlborough), and Gilbert Latey and George Whitehead
(Quakers).
The plague, introduced from Holland, first broke out in Long Acre, and
gradually spread all over London. When it became impossible to bury in
the ordinary way, huge pits were dug in the churchyards and bodies were
deposited in them without coffins. The chief plague-pit in Aldgate
Churchyard was about 40 ft. long, 15 or 16 ft. broad, and 20 ft. deep,
and between the 6th and the 20th of September, 1,114 bodies were thrown
into it. But it soon became necessary to make new burial-grounds and new
pits for the reception of the dead, as the “common graves of every
parish” became full.
[Illustration: THE PEST-HOUSES IN TOTHILL FIELDS.]
There were pest-houses in the ground to the north of Old Street and in
Tothill Fields, Westminster, to which infected persons were taken. They
corresponded to the isolation hospitals of to-day. But they could only
accommodate, at the most, 300 patients or so, and were wholly inadequate
to meet the need. The pest-houses in Old Street, or rather Bath Street,
were long ago destroyed; Pest-House Row and Russell Row used to mark
their sites. But a portion of the pest-field exists in the garden behind
the St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum, which was used as a burial-ground for the
parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, until the formation, in 1732, of St.
Luke’s parish, when it became the St Luke’s “poor ground.” The
pest-houses in Tothill Fields were standing at the beginning of the
present century. They were known as the “five houses” or the “seven
chimneys,” and were erected in 1642. The Tothill Fields, no longer being
needed as a plague burial-ground, were subsequently built upon, but not
until they had been used for the burial of 1,200 Scotch military
prisoners with their wives. A considerable portion of the fields is,
however, still open, and is known as Vincent Square, the playground of
the Westminster School boys. Mackenzie Walcott, in his Memorials of
Westminster, states that Harding’s stoneyard in Earl Street is the site
of the principal plague-pit. This, I believe, is now the yard of Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, Waste Paper Department.
Defoe gives a very careful description of some of the plague-pits and
burial-grounds which were made in his immediate neighbourhood. He
mentions—
1. “A piece of ground beyond Goswell Street, near Mount Mill, ... where
abundance were buried promiscuously from the Parishes of Aldersgate,
Clerkenwell, and even out of the city. This ground, as I take it, was
since made a Physick Garden, and after that has been built upon.” Mount
Mill was on the north side of Seward Street.
2. “A piece of ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then called,
at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch Parish; it has been since
made a Yard for keeping Hogs, and for other ordinary Uses, but is quite
out of Use for a burying-ground.”
This Holywell Mount burial-ground has been “in use” again since Defoe’s
time, and was also used as a plague-pit before 1665. Originally the site
of a theatre dating from the time of Shakespeare, and named after the
neighbouring Holywell Convent in King John’s Court, it afterwards became
a burial-ground, famous as being used for the interment of a great many
actors. There is a small part of it left, but at the outside not more
than a quarter of an acre. It is behind the church of St. James’,
Curtain Road, and is approached by a passage from Holywell Row. A parish
room has been built on it, and what remains is used as a timber yard.
The piece between the parish room and the church is bare and untidy.
3. The third place mentioned by Defoe was at “the Upper end of Hand
Alley in Bishopsgate Street, which was then a green field, and was taken
in particularly for Bishopsgate Parish, tho’ many of the Carts out of
the City brought their dead thither also, particularly out of the Parish
of Allhallows on the Wall.”
He then goes on to describe how this place was very soon built upon,
though the bodies were, in many cases, still undecomposed, and he states
that the remains of 2,000 persons were put into a pit and railed round
in an adjoining passage. New Street, Bishopsgate Street, now occupies
the site of Hand Alley.
[Illustration: STEPNEY CHURCHYARD.]
4. “Besides this there was a piece of ground in Moorfields,” &c. Here he
refers to the Bethlem burial-ground, which was not made at that time,
but enlarged. Defoe finally mentions the extra grounds which had to be
supplied in Stepney, then a very largely extended parish. They included
a piece of ground adjoining the churchyard, which was afterwards added
to it; and in 1886, in laying out this churchyard as a public garden,
some human remains, without coffins, and very close to the surface, were
accidentally disturbed at the south-western side of the ground. Another
of the Stepney pest-grounds was in Spitalfields, “where since a chapel
or Tabernacle has been built for ease to this great parish.” I believe
it to be St. Mary, Spital Square. Another was in Petticoat Lane. “There
were no less than five other grounds made use of for the Parish of
Stepney at that time, one where now stands the Parish Church of St.
Paul’s, Shadwell, and the other where now stands the Parish Church of
St. John at Wapping.” The churchyards of these two churches, the former
of which is a public garden, and the latter of which is still closed,
are therefore survivals of pest-fields. But there are three other places
to account for which Defoe does not localise. One was possibly in
Gower’s Walk, Whitechapel, where human remains, without coffins, were
come upon recently in digging the foundation for Messrs. Kinloch’s new
buildings. The remains were moved in boxes to a railway arch in
Battersea in the winter of 1893-4. I saw this excavation myself, the
layer of black earth, intermingled with bones, being between two layers
of excellent gravel soil. One additional ground bought at the time of
the Plague was on the north side of Mile End Road. By about 1745 it was
used as a market-garden, and now the site is occupied by houses south of
the junction of Lisbon and Collingwood Streets, Cambridge Road. Besides
these it is certain that a large tract of land south of the London
Hospital was also used for interments, and the Brewer’s Garden and the
site of St. Philip’s Church were probably parts of this ground, which
was known as Stepney Mount. On the north side of Corporation Row,
Clerkenwell, in digging foundations for artisan’s dwellings, a number of
human remains were recently found. This site may have been a plague-pit,
or it may have been a burial-ground for an old Bridewell close by, or an
overflow from the graveyard in Bowling Green Lane.
The chief place of interment for those who died of the plague in
Southwark was the burial-ground in Deadman’s Place (now called Park
Street). Here vast numbers of bodies were buried. The graveyard was
afterwards attached to an Independent Chapel, and many eminent
Dissenters were buried there, for it soon became a sort of Bunhill
Fields For South London. Now the carts, the trucks, and the barrels in
Messrs. Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery roll on rails over the remains of
the victims of the plague and the Dissenting ministers with their
flocks.
[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE BREWER’S GARDEN ABOUT 1830.]
[Illustration: DISSENTERS’ BURIAL-GROUND IN DEADMAN’S PLACE.
(_From Rocque’s Plan, 1746._)]
But pest-fields were needed in the west of London, as well as in the
north, south, and east, and in addition to Tothill Fields there was a
large tract of land set aside near Poland Street, upon the site of which
the St. James’s Workhouse was subsequently built, a piece of the ground
surviving still in the workhouse garden. Carnaby Market and Marshall
Street were also built on the site about the year 1723, when three
acres, known as Upton Farm, were given in exchange in the fields of
Baynard’s Watering Place (Bayswater), upon which Craven Hill Gardens now
stands. There was a plague-pit near Golden Square, this district being
all a part of the pest-field at one time.
The orchard of Normand House, by Lillie Road, Fulham, is said, by Mrs.
S. C. Hall, to have been filled with bodies in the year of the Great
Plague. The site of this orchard has almost gone; Lintaine Grove, and
the houses on the north side of Lillie Road were built upon it. There is
still a piece vacant, and for sale, at the corner of Tilton Street,
about three-quarters of an acre in extent. Knightsbridge Green (opposite
Tattersalls) was also used for the victims of the Plague, and those who
died in the Lazar Hospital. Such are all the records of plague-pits and
pest-fields which I think sufficiently authentic to record.
There used to be an additional burial-ground for Aldgate parish in
Cartwright Street, E., consecrated in 1615. This, at the beginning of
the present century, was covered with small houses, and on a part of the
site the Weigh House School was built in 1846. The rookery was cleared
by the Metropolitan Board of Works nearly forty years later, when Darby
Street was made, and the vacant land was offered as a site for artisans’
dwellings. I brought the case to the notice of the Metropolitan Public
Gardens Association, and the Board was communicated with. At first it
was denied that any part of the site had been a burial-ground, but
excavations were made and human remains were found. Nor was this really
necessary, for the workmen who had pulled down the houses, and the
authorities at the school, were well aware of the fact, and knew of
actual tombstones being unearthed, upon which a date as late as 1806 had
been found. The Board of Works caused the plans for the surrounding new
buildings to be altered, and what is left of the site of the
burial-ground is now an asphalted playground adjoining the southern
block. A certain gentleman afterwards wrote and circulated a pamphlet,
in which he stated that the Metropolitan Board of Works had discovered
one of the “seites” set apart in Whitechapel for a pest-ground in 1349,
whereas the fact was that the Board had been driven, somewhat against
its will, to preserve as an open space the site of a consecrated
burial-ground belonging to the parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate. That it
may once have been a part of a pest-field is likely enough, for they
abounded in the district, but the age of the Aldgate ground was, I
consider, sufficient to account for the driest of the dry bones found
there.
Although the Plague has not re-appeared, there have been periods of
great mortality from other diseases. Special provisions for burial had
to be made at the time of the cholera visitations. In the outbreak of
1832, 196 bodies were interred in a plot of ground adjoining the
additional burial-ground for Whitechapel (now the playground of the
Davenant Schools). A large piece of ground by the churchyard of All
Saints, Poplar, on the north side of the Rectory, was also used for the
purpose, and the circumstance is recorded on the monument which stands
in the middle of it.
The fact that the bodies in the pest-fields and plague-pits were usually
buried without coffins, and were only wrapped in rugs, sheets, &C., has
accelerated their decay, and it can no longer be thought dangerous when
such pits are opened. Not that I wish in any way to defend the
disturbance of human remains, for I hold that no ground in which
interments have taken place should be used for any other purpose than
that of an open space, and, apart from the legal and sentimental aspects
of the question, human remains, in whatever state of decay they may be,
are not fit foundations for buildings, nor is it seemly or proper to
gather them up and burn them in a hole, or to cram them promiscuously
into chests or “black boxes,” to be padlocked and deposited in other
grounds or convenient vaults. But the old plague-pits, the very crowded
churchyards, and the private grounds where the soil was saturated with
quicklime, the coffins smashed at once, and decay in every way hurried,
are likely now to be less insalubrious than those grounds where lead and
oaken coffins—specially intended to last for generations—are still in
good preservation, and only occasionally give way and let out the
putrifactive emanations.
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