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.

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.

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.

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.