210 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



into their very chambers where they lay sick." " Nay, even into 

 the same beds, with those that had the distemper upon them, 

 and were not recovered." 



Now let us consider the criminals, and the incidence of the 

 disease upon them. " That there were a great many robberies 

 and wicked practices committed even in this dreadful time I do 

 not deny. The power of avarice was so strong in some that they 

 would run any hazard to steal and to plunder ; they would break- 

 in [to houses] at all hazards, and without regard to the danger of 

 infection take even the clothes off the dead bodies.'" " It is, 

 indeed, to be observed that the women were in all this calamity 

 the most rash, fearless and desperate creatures, and as there were 

 vast numbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were 

 sick, they committed a great many petty thieveries in the houses 

 where they were employed." These statements speak for 

 themselves, and I need not further comment upon them, except 

 to say this : that very probably a great number of persons of 

 thievish propensities became nurses, not to nurse, but in order 

 to utilize the opportunities for stealing. If these passages and 

 others in the " Journal " have any meaning, they signify that 

 the thieving and pilfering instincts took their possessors into 

 danger, and led the majority of them to their destruction. 



It is often said that the plague strikes all persons alike, irre- 

 spective of strength or weakness. There are reasons to justify 

 us in doubting this beUef, and Defoe's " Journal " strengthens 

 these doubts. There is no reason why we should doubt that the 

 plague, like malaria, inflicts some fatally, otliers not fatally, and 

 others not at all. In other words, the plague, not only socially 

 but constitutionally,exerts an evolutionary influence, eliminating 

 the susceptible and leaving the immune. There is, for instance, 

 the case of John Hay ward, under-sexton, gravedigger, and bearer 

 of the dead. " This man carried, or assisted to carry, all the 

 dead to their graves, and who were carried in form (that is bodily 

 and individually), and after that form of burying was stopped, 

 went with the dead-cart and the bell to fetch the dead bodies 

 from the houses where they lay, and fetched many of them out 

 of the chambers and houses ; for the parish was remarkable for 

 a great number of very long alleys, into which no carts could 

 come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the bodies 

 a very long way." " Which work he performed and never had 

 the distemper at all, but lived twenty years after the Plague." 

 " His wife at the same time was a nurse to infected people, and 

 tended many that died in the parish, yet she never was infected 

 neither." 



Then there is the case of the " piper," who one night having 

 drunk too much, lay down upon a stall in the street, and was taken 



