Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/23

 2 s. ix. JULY 2,i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 13 does not necessarily follow that there was those who had died in the lazar -house and a plague pit at this place. the story of their presence there is based The plague broke out first in Westminster, on "a tradition." How much is the tra- which consisted at that time of five parishes dition worth ? T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. St. Clement Danes, St. Paul, Covent The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W. Garden, St. Martin-in -the -Fields, St. Mary, Soho, and St. Margaret. In a " General j The exact local of these places of emer- Bill of Mortality from Bell's * London Remem- 1 gency interment has not been satisfactorily brancer ' " we are told that " in the five identified, and we are largely dependent parishes" of Westminster 12,194 persons j upon chance discovery and the intelligent were buried. If we may lay stress on the ' archaeologist tradition is, as always, un- meaning of the preposition "in," this state- reliable ; every churchyard and green in ment proves that the dead were buried in the London area is believed to be the site Westminster and not outside, and this seems of a plague pit. likely enough from what we know of what Henry George Davis ( ' Memorials of was done elsewhere. Vincent tells us that Knightsbridge,' p. 145), who was respon- " in September the churchyards are stuft sible for the Knightsbridge Green identifi- so full of dead corpses that they are in many cation, .has depended upon inference. The places swelled two or three feet higher only authentic plague pit within my know- than they were before, and new ground is ledge was found in the churchyard of St. broken up to bury the dead." In some Botolph, Aldgate, in the seventies, the cases the churchyards were enlarged. The ground caving in and disclosing the pit. great pits seem, sometimes at any rate, to MRS. E. E. COPE, who seeks an estimate have been quite near to where people lived ; of the deaths during this epidemic, should thus Pepys saw one at Aldgate close to a consult ' London's Dreadful Visitation,' a church ; others were at Houndsditch, collection of the Bills of Mortality pre- Finsbury, the north side of the Mile End pared by the Company of Parish Clerks Road, and in the parish of St. Stephen's, Col- and piiblished Dec. 1665. man Street not one of them, be it observed, ALECK ABRAHAMS. to the west of the City. We are also told that the corpses were sometimes carried CANALETTO (8 S. viii. 407). After the xt to a little distance in the environs " and lapse of more than a quarter of a century, that the night was too short in which to it may be considered rather late to reply bury them. to a question at the above reference, relating Now, surely, it is inconceivable that the to a book entitled ' Princes, Grands Capi- corpses were sent to Knightsbridge from taines, et autres Hommes Illustres de la what we should now call the East End, Grande -Bretagne,' which is said to have where the plague raged with especial vio- contained " some of Canaletto's etchings." lence. If there had been a pit at Knights- I should like, however, to place on record bridge it must have been for those who died the full title and description of the work in Westminister. But would they have been mentioned. It is as follows : sent so far ? In those days much of West- Tombeaux des Princes Grands Capitaines et minister was very sparsely populated autres Hommes Illustres, Qui ont fleuri (sic) There were a few taverns in Holborn ; a fans la Grande-Bretagne vers la fin du XVII et c ri T i j i -I- le commencement du XVIII Siecle. Gravez fair number of Cavaliers had built houses par les plus habiles Maitres de Paris? d > apres les in Lovent Garden ; Henrietta Street takes its Tableaux et desseins originaux des plus celebres name from the wife of Charles I. Some Peintres d' Italic. Tirez du Cabinet de Mon- who preferred solitude lived in Soho Fields, ' seigneur le Due de Richmond, de Lennox, et Pall Mall and St Tames' <? Tn th TTnv i d'Aubigny ; Chevalr de 1'Ordre de la Jarretiere, J*y- et Grand Ecuyer de S.M. le Rov de la Grande- market there was one house ; in Pecadilly Bretagne. Le tout dirige et mis au jour par les Mall none at all. From the high ground j soins de Eugene Mac-Swiny a Londres, there, the eye ranged over a charming ex- MDCCXXXXI. (1741). panse of lawn and woodland and St. James's > A copy of this work, from the library Park, and behind them rose what was no doubt of Consul Smith of Venice, is in the British then the crowded part of Westminster, i Museum (King's Library, 10 Tab. 25), It seems that it is safer to conclude that indexed under " MacSwiny, Eugene." if any victims of the plague were buried j This MacSwiny was none other than near vhoro Tattersall's now is, they were Owen McSwiny, the theatrical manager