xviii • Prefacevantage point except individual experiences.^5 The sources for the individual
approach do exist, as James Amelang notes in his edition of a tanner’s ac-
count of a plague epidemic in Barcelona in 1651.^6 Personal accounts of Lon-
don’s Great Plague in 1665 are especially numerous and detailed. We knew of
the published ones before we entered the archives; we were surprised by the
additional narratives we found there.
Dorothy’s concern, as a scientist trained to search for evidence with a
microscope, was how to keep up with Lloyd, who seemed to work through
manuscripts like a spymaster. Her first hurdle was to manage handwritten
letters, diaries, or parish accounts and not doze after hours deciphering a
nearly illegible script. Mastering early modern handwriting took weeks of
staring at alphabetic samples and comparing these to the documents’Rs,Es,
Hs,Gs, double Fs and Ss. Also challenging were abbreviations, such as psh
for parish and Lordship as Lopp. Another test was the seventeenth-century
meaning of words such as jealousy—“I am jealous of you going out at night
alone,” meaning I am fearful for you. Spelling had not yet been standardized,
and a writer might use several variations for a single word in the same letter.
“Murtherd” in the street appeared for murdered; “lanthorn” was our lantern.
English words from the German were in transition; an ieword like our field
could be “feild.” Causes of death were varied and imaginative: “killed by a
planet” meant that the astrological signs were not right, or death might come
by “surprise.” Our favorite word usage was Samuel Pepys’ account of eyeing
the bounty from a captured Dutch ship at sea and estimating what the prize
would be. When in port the prize was found to be greater than the estimate,
it was a sur-prise. When we began to dream at night of seventeenth-century
writing and words, we realized that we’d begun the process of interpreting
the seventeenth-century hand. It is a carefully guarded secret among histori-
ans that archival work can be exhilarating, especially if it involves a topic as
compelling as the dreaded plague.
We have drawn on more than twenty archives in Greater London, Essex,
East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Oxford, and the United States. Each proved to
harbor unexpected plague accounts. Dorothy began research in the old Brit-
ish Library at the British Museum by checking inventive adaptations of
Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year.She wanted to look for Defoe’s literary
thumbprints to avoid recounting fictional tales of the Great Plague. Eight
small volumes, all tied with ribbons because of dilapidated binding, arrived at
her desk, precipitating her first rush of excitement with detective work on
historical sources.