Post by Catsmate on Sept 14, 2019 12:33:14 GMT
During the London plague outbreak of 1665 a Clerkenwell fabric tradesmen named John Cole kept detailed diaries of the events, including his house being sealed with the family inside after his wife Johanna became ill.
On 4 September 1665 armed watchmen locked and sealed the family house’s doors, painted a red cross and took up guard outside. According to the practice the doors would be opened after a month; after which time it was believed the occupants would either be cured or dead.
John Cole continued to make entries in his diary, including his wife’s condition worsening and his own symptoms; the blood-red rings known as ‘tokens’ that marked his skin. Expecting hos illness to worsen and that he and his wide will probably die, John he focussed on the safety of their two children, Ann and Thomas.
He seals the children into the house’s attic to protect them from the ‘miasma’ that was believes to transmit the disease. Each day Vole ascends the stairs, passes in food and speaks to his children.
Around this time the diary entries get odder.
The children speak of the return of their their pets; a cat named Inky, that had disappeared around the beginning of September, and a blackbird (named Peter) that Thomas has saved as a chick who’d flown off.
The blackbird alights on the sill outside their single gable window while the cat watches them from across the street; not terrible implausible, especially for stressed and imaginative children.
However they also spoke, according to the diary, of spirits, which they called silver ghosts, that ran past the house during the night and performing some unknown rituals, while the watchmen stood oblivious.
Some scholars consider that these pages are evidence of John’s deteriorating health; certainly he didn’t seem to question the tales. He focussed on praying and caring for the health of his children, asking them frequently whether they shows signs of the plague. He tells them bluntly that their mother is dead and that he expects to be dead soon also, warning them to wait as long as they can, after he stops coming, before they leave the room in search of food.
In his final diary entry mentioning his children Cole writes that they’ve told him that the shadows in the wall have taken shape, that in the night a boy in a physician’s mask came and told them that before the sickness infected them he would return with friends to take them somewhere far away.
John Cole’s final entry is mostly illegible; he bemoans the “last packe of candles” and prays for his children: “Up wards, to God… salvation, my birds… beside Hime… God heare me”
According to the parish records, when the Cole house was cleared in October it contained two adult bodies and no survivors.
So what happened?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
- Cole’s diaries are a fascinating slice of seventeenth century London life contemporaneous with those of Samuel Pepys but of a different social class. They’re held at the London Metropolitan Archives but unfortunately are not available online.
On 4 September 1665 armed watchmen locked and sealed the family house’s doors, painted a red cross and took up guard outside. According to the practice the doors would be opened after a month; after which time it was believed the occupants would either be cured or dead.
- In Defoe’s fictionalised account A Journal of the Plague Year, the practice of shutting-up the houses of the infected, so that neither they nor their family could leave, is discussed.
- This is a fascinating idea for a claustrophobic scenario with the PCs, or some of them, stuck inside a house where someone is infected; can they survive? Do they try and escape? Do they have advanced medial supplies? Do they share them? How do the people react?
John Cole continued to make entries in his diary, including his wife’s condition worsening and his own symptoms; the blood-red rings known as ‘tokens’ that marked his skin. Expecting hos illness to worsen and that he and his wide will probably die, John he focussed on the safety of their two children, Ann and Thomas.
He seals the children into the house’s attic to protect them from the ‘miasma’ that was believes to transmit the disease. Each day Vole ascends the stairs, passes in food and speaks to his children.
Around this time the diary entries get odder.
The children speak of the return of their their pets; a cat named Inky, that had disappeared around the beginning of September, and a blackbird (named Peter) that Thomas has saved as a chick who’d flown off.
The blackbird alights on the sill outside their single gable window while the cat watches them from across the street; not terrible implausible, especially for stressed and imaginative children.
However they also spoke, according to the diary, of spirits, which they called silver ghosts, that ran past the house during the night and performing some unknown rituals, while the watchmen stood oblivious.
Some scholars consider that these pages are evidence of John’s deteriorating health; certainly he didn’t seem to question the tales. He focussed on praying and caring for the health of his children, asking them frequently whether they shows signs of the plague. He tells them bluntly that their mother is dead and that he expects to be dead soon also, warning them to wait as long as they can, after he stops coming, before they leave the room in search of food.
In his final diary entry mentioning his children Cole writes that they’ve told him that the shadows in the wall have taken shape, that in the night a boy in a physician’s mask came and told them that before the sickness infected them he would return with friends to take them somewhere far away.
John Cole’s final entry is mostly illegible; he bemoans the “last packe of candles” and prays for his children: “Up wards, to God… salvation, my birds… beside Hime… God heare me”
According to the parish records, when the Cole house was cleared in October it contained two adult bodies and no survivors.
So what happened?
- Did the children sneak out, or were they rescued, before the watchmen broke in.
- Was Cole driven mad and kill his children, hiding their bodies?
- Was there some sort of rift in space-time, and a sympathetic rescuer. An oversuit and respirator (or military/UNIT CBW gear) would resemble the contemporary plague doctor outfit (see here) to the children.
- If they were rescued, what happened to Ann and Thomas? Who was responsible? Was this officially sanctioned? Passing Time Lord or traveller attracted to (or stuck in) the crack? UNIT experiment? University students messing with an "Egyptian" artefect and some mirrors?
- What did the children see outside? Were the spirits real (perhaps temporal echoes from the crack) or purely imaginative creations?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?