Behind Closed Gates

During the great plague of 1713 and 1714 the mayor Voříkovský, on the governors' orders, had the gates of the Jewish Town closed. Only sick Jews were carried out from there through František and through what is now Karlín to the lazaretto at Olšany; some hundred persons a day are said to have died among the Jews and in the hospital. Otherwise no one was let into Josefov, nor out of it, and medicines and food were delivered there at night through the gates, whose keys the Old Town authorities held. In vain did the Jews ask to be allowed to move out to the Imperial Meadow; they were not permitted it, on the grounds that they would scatter over the countryside and throw the corpses into the river. About half the Jews died at that time.