Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Today, the house is a museum. While the exhibits are fascinating for hard-core John-
son fans (I met one once), the old house is interesting in itself, even for the casual visitor.
See a video and climb four stories through period furniture, passing a first edition of John-
son's dictionary and pictures of Johnson, Garrick, and Boswell. Nothing is roped off or
behind glass, and you can browse at will. See objects Johnson once owned: his walking
stick, a chair, a letter carrier, and a brick from something that fascinated him—the Great
Wall of China. Portraits bring to life his urbane circle of friends, which, in addition to
Boswell and Garrick (pictured in the role of Richard III), included actress Sarah Siddons,
painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and writer Oliver Goldsmith, many of whom socialized at
the home of the sophisticated Elizabeth Montagu. Finally you arrive in the top-floor gar-
ret where literary history was made—the birthplace of the dictionary that standardized our
English language.
London's Great Plague of 1665
The Grim Reaper—in the form of the bacteria
Yersinia pestis
(bubonic
plague)—rode through London on fleas atop a black rat. It killed one in six people,
while leaving the buildings standing. (The next year, the Great Fire consumed the
buildings.) It started in the spring as “the Poore's Plague,” neglected until it spread
to richer neighborhoods. During the especially hot summer, 5,000 died each week.
By December, St. Bride's congregation was 2,111 souls fewer.
Victims passed through several days of agony: headaches, vomiting, fever,
shivering, swollen tongue, and swollen buboes (lumps) on the groin glands. After
their skin turned blotchy black (the “Black Death”), they died. “Searchers of the
Dead” carted bodies off to mass graves, including one near St. Bride's (see
here
).
Both the victims and their families were quarantined under house arrest, with a red
cross painted on the door and a guard posted nearby, and denied access to food,
water, or medical attention for 40 days—a virtual death sentence even for the unin-
fected.
The disease was blamed on dogs and cats, and paid dog-killers destroyed tens
of thousands of pets—which brought even more rats. People who didn't die tried
to leave. The Lord Mayor quarantined the whole city within the walls, so the only
way out was to produce (or purchase) a “certificate of health.”
By fall, London was a ghost town, and throughout England, people avoided
Londoners like the Plague. It took the Great Fire of 1666 to fully cleanse the city
