The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

222 • Surviving

sent to the justices of the peace for summary judgment and, if necessary, con-

finement to a jail or workhouse. At the Tower, a garrison commanded by Sir

John Robinson watched out for greater threats to public order, breaking up

conventicles of Quakers and other dissenters and keeping a watch for sus-

picious activity by old revolutionaries.

At times it seemed that anarchy reigned in the streets. Symon Patrick and

Samuel Pepys knew that some parishes in the suburbs and the old merchant

Fig. 12 .Medical care in an infected household and outdoor plague controls in 1665.
In the first frame a nurse approaches a sick bed on the left and a doctor attends a sick
bed on the right. Nearby on the floor lie a body and coffin, while other members of
the household (infirm or recuperating from the plague?) support themselves with
canes. The second frame features red crosses on two doors and watchmen posted out-
side, two women searchers with their identifying wands, a parish raker carrying away
dead dogs in his wheelbarrow, the dog killer attacking a fleeing animal, and two men
bearing a plague victim in a sedan chair to the pesthouse. The two fires in the middle
of the street, positioned four doors apart, suggest the public fires ordered by the au-
thorities on September 5 .Courtesy of the Museum of London