This episode is one of the most disturbing in the novel. It concerns the death of newborn infants and their mothers at or shortly after childbirth as the result, direct or indirect, of the plague. Some died along with their mothers at the moment of birth, others died for lack of skilled midwives, the better of whom had fled, and there were even cases of infants dying at the hands of their mothers driven mad from the disease. From the Bills of Mortality published weekly during the visitation, the author reports that maternal mortality, so-called deaths in Birth-Bed, and incidents of miscarriages, premature births, and stillborn infants were roughly twice as high in 1665 as in the preceding year, on a population base he estimates as one-third smaller.
And of course, newborns were no less susceptible to the plague than any others, and many died in their mother’s arms in the first weeks of life as disease swept through the entire household. In sum, this episode is a litany of horrors, told without literary embellishment of any kind, horrors that lead the author to conclude that in future visitations pregnant women and women nursing young children should use every means at their disposal to flee at the first rumor of plague.
[For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]
Credits:
Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard.
Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission.
Visit our website: www.londonplague.com
© 2020 Mark Cummings