Plague near London in 1665

Meanwhile various parts of England were affected with plague during and after the great epidemic, and in one or two instances a little before it. In the immediate neighbourhood of the capital all the towns and villages usually implicated by the exodus from the City had cases of plague, as the following table shows. It has been compiled from the parish registers, as extracted in Lysons’ Environs of London, Defoe’s widely discrepant figures being given for comparison in the third column.

All
causes Plague Defoe’s
list.

Barking 230 200

Barnes 27

Barnet and Hadley 43

Battersea 113

Beckenham 18

Brentford 103 432

Brentwood 70

Bromley 27 7

Camberwell 133

Charlton 7 3

Chertsey 18

Chiselhurst 21

Clapham 28

Croydon 141 61

Deptford 548 374 623

Ealing 286 244

Edmonton 19

Eltham 44 32 85

Enfield 176 32

Epping 26

Finchley 38

Greenwich 416 231

Hampstead 214

Heston 48 13

Hodsdon 30

Hertford 90

Hornsey 53 43 85

Islewort 195 149

Kensington 62 25

Kingston 122

Lewisham 56

Mortlake 197 170

Newington, Stoke 17

Norwood 12 2

Putney 74

Romford 90 109

St Albans 121

Stratford-Bow 139

Staines 82

Tottenham no entries 42

Twickenham 21

Uxbridge 117

Waltham Abbey 23

Walthamstow 68

Wandsworth 245

Ware 160

Watford 45

Windsor 103

Woodford 33

The most striking fact that comes out is that most of the parishes around London had actually fewer deaths from plague in 1665 than in 1603. The exceptions to this rule in 1665 are the villages on or near the Thames above London-Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Mortlake, Brentford, Isleworth, and Ealing, which had all a very high mortality, Barnes being almost exempt. On the lower reaches of the Thames, Barking on the Essex shore, and Deptford, Greenwich and Lewisham on the other side, had the infection in them very severely; but these three places in Kent had a still more severe visitation in 1666, along with other towns in that county.

On September 9, Evelyn wrote from his Deptford house, Sayes Court, that “near thirty houses are visited in this miserable village.” The infection got also among the ships of the navy; on August 29, on board the ‘Loyal Subject’ at Deal, Captain Fortescue and six men died suddenly, it was feared of the plague.