Post-COVID: the federal government returns to political primacy, old political fights pick up where they left off, and conservatives revert to austerity budgets.
Well they’re the big takeaways from the first (and still best) piece of journalism on the impact of pandemics on modern society: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, a social deep dive into London’s 1665 plague, the first great work of literary journalism in the English language by one of the founders of the craft.
Different disease, of course, with higher reproduction numbers and deaths (Reff and CFR) — as we understand things now. Still the best look-back at “what just happened” in a pandemic, inventing journalism on the run, bringing together data, anecdotes and a social understanding of urban networks. It rhymes with our experience and points to what’s likely to happen next.
Diseases entrench poverty
Pandemics are diseases of the poor and of poorer parts of cities, spread through supply chains. (In 1665 London, as in 2020 Melbourne, through meatworks; as in 2021 Sydney, through incoming freight.) Classes experience them differently: in 1665 the rich left for their country estates; in 2021 rich-lister Lachlan Murdoch moved his family to Sydney’s eastern suburbs while we work from home relying on distribution workers to bring us things.
It’s disconcerting that 300 years ago, a jobbing journalist was better able to capture that difference than most journalists today, partly due to journalistic passion replacement by cool objectivity as the price paid for the influence of mass media. And partly due to our focus on lockdowns, which the middle class endure while the pandemic hits those who live in 12 of Sydney’s local government areas or Melbourne’s western and northern suburbs, where journalists, by and large, don’t.
The pivot to austerity
London’s 1665 working class relied on charity, particularly the royal charity standing in for 2020’s JobKeeper/JobSeeker and 2021’s disaster payments. Here’s a warning: once the worst was over, Defoe wrote that “all the sluices of general charity were now shut” and “the distress of those that were poor was very great indeed”.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has already made one attempt to turn off the sluices, winding up JobKeeper and JobSeeker and dragging his feet in the current wave. The Morrison government is eager to get past COVID (and the election) to return to “debt-and-deficits” moral panic to drive fiscal consolidation.
As things improve, people stop listening
Sydney and Melbourne are at that stage of Defoe’s plague where as case numbers fall (then due to herd immunity, now to vaccination) that: “People … took to such a precipitant courage and grew so entirely regardless of themselves … that they made no more of the plague than of an ordinary fever.”
Enter 17th century physicians Kerry Chant and Brett Sutton: “The physicians oppos’d this thoughtless humour of the people with all their might, and gave out printed directions … advising the people to continue to use still the utmost caution … notwithstanding the decrease of the distemper.”
However, as we see on our television screens: “It was all to no purpose … They were impenetrable by any new terrors, and would not be persuaded but that the bitterness of death was pass’d.”
A hint, too, for the no COVID states’ borders: they stay closed much longer than the impatience of the recovering cities.
Political power shakes but doesn’t shift
And here, in Defoe’s 300-year-old book, is our Prime Minister Scott Morrison: “The court concern’d themselves so little, and that little they did was of so small import, that I do not see it of much moment to mention any part of it here.”
The lord mayor, on the other hand, was “continually in the streets, and at places of the greatest danger”. Dan Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian press conference-style, he “had a low gallery built on purpose in his hall, where he stood … when any complaint came to be heard”.
As soon as the danger was passed, however, the court moved back to the city and, as the nursery rhyme tells us, within a year had its breakthrough hose-holding moment when “the grand old duke of york” marched his men up and down to fight the Great Fire of London.
About that next bottle of wine…
Here’s the last warning: not me, says Defoe, but plenty kept “the spirits always high and hot with cordials and wine … and so became a sot for all his life after”.
A really excellent and very informative comparison, Christopher.
Thank you very much for doing that research.
I am not surprised by one thing that you have said. Homo sapiens are not that different from what we were several thousand years ago, let alone 360 or so years.
As the old saying goes:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I think that Alphonse Karr was just being waspish…
I doubt we are very much different than 100,000 years ago. Human nature doesn’t really change, only the circumstances around them, which are really just repeats of former times in different guise.
Quite agree with you DG.
No doubt Chris Warren is aware, but unwary readers may not be, that Defoe’s book is, literally, “fake news” – it was dressed up as a contemporary account but was published in 1722, 55 years after the Plague Year (1665). Defoe was 5 years old in that year. Not to say that Defoe didn’t do a lot of research, and that the book isn’t a remarkable piece of work, but it is NOT a work of “jobbing journalism” or a “best look back on what just happened” – it’s a reconstruction of what had happened half a century earlier. Maybe Chris should have acknowledged that somewhere in his piece.
Defoe was 5 at the time the plague hit, so recollections may be partly indirect
His uncle, however, to whom he was close, was deeply involved in the management of the plague, so he is closer than most to primary sources.
It is a very good read and does illustrate the points made – our response to this current situation has a lot in common with he way people, especially the privileged, reacted then.
And it costs all of $2.50 online
Or, indeed, it is free: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/376
Defoe’s book is not journalism, it’s a novel. It’s fiction based on other people’s experiences, not Defoe’s own experience.
Not a novel, more a reconstruction of actual events, using documents (eg lists of the dead) and accounts of the survivors – with a dash of colour to add verisimilitude.
Most journalism is based on other people’s experiences. And as to whether and how much of the book should be regarded as fiction or non-fiction, my understanding is that’s a source of continuing debate to this day, but I don’t think there’s much dispute that Defoe drew upon a lot of research for the book and painted a pretty accurate picture of the plague by the standards of the early 18th century. His work is not proper journalism by our standards, but you could certainly argue it’s an important precursor.
Very precocious, that Defoe chappie, given that he was born only 5 years before the plague hit London.
That had me googling and wiki-ing Selkie – it’s a point, that’s for sure!
Here’s what Wiki had to say about it –
A Journal of the Plague Year
A Journal of the Plague Year can be read both as novel and as non-fiction. It is an account of the Great Plague of London in 1665, which is undersigned by the initials “H. F.”, suggesting the author’s uncle Henry Foe as its primary source. It is a historical account of the events based on extensive research and written as if seen through an eyewitness experience, published in 1722.[33][34][35]
That had me googling and wiki-ing Selkie – it’s a point, that’s for sure!
Here’s what Wiki had to say about it –
A Journal of the Plague Year can be read both as novel and as non-fiction. It is an account of the Great Plague of London in 1665, which is undersigned by the initials “H. F.”, suggesting the author’s uncle Henry Foe as its primary source. It is a historical account of the events based on extensive research and written as if seen through an eyewitness experience