Enfield 32

Hornsey 58

Newington 17

Tottenham 42

Edmonton 19

Barnet and Hadley 43

St. Albans 121

Watford 45

Uxbridge 117

Hertford 90

Ware 160

Hodsdon 30

Waltham Abbey 23

Epping 26

Deptford 623

Greenwich 631

Eltham and Lusum 85

Croydon 61

Brentwood 70

Rumford 109

Barking about 200

Brandford 432

Kingston 122

Staines 82

Chertsey 18

Windsor 103

_cum aliis._[230]

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect to the

citizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and this was what I

hinted at before; namely, that there was a seeming propensity, or a

wicked inclination, in those that were infected, to infect others.

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the reason of

this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it

impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of rage and a

hatred against their own kind, as if there were a malignity, not only in

the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man,

prompting him with evil will, or an evil eye, that as they say in the

case of a mad dog, who, though the gentlest creature before of any of

his kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him,

and those as soon as any, who have been most observed[231] by him

before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human nature,

who[232] cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own

species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all men were as unhappy

or in as bad a condition as itself.

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or regarding

what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the danger or safety, not

only of anybody near them, but even of themselves also. And indeed, when

men are once come to a condition to abandon themselves, and be

unconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be

so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other

people.

But I choose to give this grave debate quite a different turn, and

answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the fact. On

the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was a

general complaint raised by the people inhabiting the outlying villages

against the citizens, to justify, or at least excuse, those hardships

and severities so much talked of, and in which complaints both sides may

be said to have injured one another; that is to say, the citizens

pressing to be received and harbored in time of distress, and with the

plague upon them, complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country

people in being refused entrance, and forced back again with their

goods and families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed

upon, and the citizens breaking in, as it were, upon them, whether they

would or no, complain that when they[233] were infected, they were not

only regardless of others, but even willing to infect them: neither of

which was really true, that is to say, in the colors they[234] were

described in.

It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms which

were given to the country, of the resolution of the people of London to

come out by force, not only for relief, but to plunder and rob; that

they ran about the streets with the distemper upon them without any

control; and that no care was taken to shut up houses, and confine the

sick people from infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice,

they never practiced such things, except in such particular cases as I

have mentioned above, and such like. On the other hand, everything was

managed with so much care, and such excellent order was observed in the

whole city and suburbs, by the care of the lord mayor and aldermen, and

by the justices of the peace, churchwardens, etc., in the outparts, that

London may be a pattern to all the cities in the world for the good

government and the excellent order that was everywhere kept, even in the

time of the most violent infection, and when the people were in the

utmost consternation and distress. But of this I shall speak by itself.

One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the prudence

of the magistrates, and ought to be mentioned to their honor; viz., the

moderation which they used in the great and difficult work of shutting

up houses. It is true, as I have mentioned, that the shutting up of

houses was a great subject of discontent, and I may say, indeed, the

only subject of discontent among the people at that time; for the

confining the sound in the same house with the sick was counted very

terrible, and the complaints of people so confined were very grievous:

they were heard in the very streets, and they were sometimes such that

called for resentment, though oftener for compassion. They had no way to

converse with any of their friends but out of their windows, where they

would make such piteous lamentations as often moved the hearts of those

they talked with, and of others who, passing by, heard their story; and

as those complaints oftentimes reproached the severity, and sometimes

the insolence, of the watchmen placed at their doors, those watchmen

would answer saucily enough, and perhaps be apt to affront the people

who were in the street talking to the said families; for which, or for

their ill treatment of the families, I think seven or eight of them in

several places were killed. I know not whether I should say murdered or

not, because I cannot enter into the particular cases. It is true, the

watchmen were on their duty, and acting in the post where they were

placed by a lawful authority; and killing any public legal officer in

the execution of his office is always, in the language of the law,

called "murder." But as they were not authorized by the magistrate's

instructions, or by the power they acted under, to be injurious or

abusive, either to the people who were under their observation or to any

that concerned themselves for them, so that,[235] when they did so, they

might be said to act themselves, not their office; to act as private

persons, not as persons employed; and consequently, if they brought

mischief upon themselves by such an undue behavior, that mischief was

upon their own heads. And indeed they had so much the hearty curses of

the people, whether they deserved it or not, that, whatever befell them,

nobody pitied them; and everybody was apt to say they deserved it,

whatever it was. Nor do I remember that anybody was ever punished, at

least to any considerable degree, for whatever was done to the watchmen

that guarded their houses.

What variety of stratagems were used to escape, and get out of houses

thus shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or overpowered, and

that[236] the people got away, I have taken notice of already, and shall

say no more to that; but I say the magistrates did moderate and ease

families upon many occasions in this case, and particularly in that of

taking away or suffering to be removed the sick persons out of such

houses, when they were willing to be removed, either to a pesthouse or

other places, and sometimes giving the well persons in the family so

shut up leave to remove, upon information given that they were well, and

that they would confine themselves in such houses where they went, so

long as should be required of them. The concern, also, of the

magistrates for the supplying such poor families as were infected,--I

say, supplying them with necessaries, as well physic as food,--was very

great: and in which they did not content themselves with giving the

necessary orders to the officers appointed; but the aldermen, in person

and on horseback, frequently rode to such houses, and caused the people

to be asked at their windows whether they were duly attended or not,

also whether they wanted anything that was necessary, and if the

officers had constantly carried their messages, and fetched them such

things as they wanted, or not. And if they answered in the affirmative,

all was well; but if they complained that they were ill supplied, and

that the officer did not do his duty, or did not treat them civilly,

they (the officers) were generally removed, and others placed in their

stead.

It is true, such complaint might be unjust; and if the officer had such

arguments to use as would convince the magistrate that he was right, and

that the people had injured him, he was continued, and they reproved.

But this part could not well bear a particular inquiry, for the parties

could very ill be well heard and answered in the street from the

windows, as was the case then. The magistrates, therefore, generally

chose to favor the people, and remove the man, as what seemed to be the

least wrong and of the least ill consequence; seeing, if the watchman

was injured, yet they could easily make him amends by giving him another

post of a like nature; but, if the family was injured, there was no

satisfaction could be made to them, the damage, perhaps, being

irreparable, as it concerned their lives.

A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the watchmen

and the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly mentioned about

escaping. Sometimes the watchmen were absent, sometimes drunk, sometimes

asleep, when the people wanted them; and such never failed to be

punished severely, as indeed they deserved.

But, after all that was or could be done in these cases, the shutting up

of houses, so as to confine those that were well with those that were

sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and some that were very

tragical, and which merited to have been considered, if there had been

room for it: but it was authorized by a law, it had the public good in

view as the end chiefly aimed at; and all the private injuries that were

done by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of the

public benefit.

It is doubtful whether, in the whole, it contributed anything to the

stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it did, for nothing could

run with greater fury and rage than the infection did when it was in its

chief violence, though the houses infected were shut up as exactly and

effectually as it was possible. Certain it is, that, if all the infected

persons were effectually shut in, no sound person could have been

infected by them, because they could not have come near them.[237] But

the case was this (and I shall only touch it here); namely, that the

infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not

visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected, nor whom they

were infected by.

A house in Whitechapel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid,

who had only spots, not the tokens, come out upon her, and recovered;

yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or

exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger, vexation, and all the

other griefs attending such an injurious treatment, cast the mistress of

the family into a fever; and visitors came into the house and said it

was the plague, though the physicians declared it was not. However, the

family were obliged to begin their quarantine anew, on the report of the

visitor or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a few

days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and grief,

and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room, and for want of

breathing and free air, that most of the family fell sick, one of one

distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic[238] ailments, only one a

violent cholic; until, after several prolongings of their confinement,

some or other of those that came in with the visitors to inspect the

persons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper

with them, and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died,

not of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that

those people brought them, who should have been careful to have

protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently happened,

and was indeed one of the worst consequences of shutting houses up.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was at

first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about, though, as it

proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was, being

appointed, by the alderman of Portsoken Ward, one of the examiners of

the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had

no less than eighteen examiners, as the order called us: the people

called us visitors. I endeavored with all my might to be excused from

such an employment, and used many arguments with the alderman's deputy

to be excused; particularly, I alleged that I was against shutting up

houses at all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an

instrument in that which was against my judgment, and which I did verily

believe would not answer the end it was intended for. But all the

abatement I could get was only, that whereas the officer was appointed

by my lord mayor to continue two months, I should be obliged to hold it

but three weeks, on condition, nevertheless, that I could then get some

other sufficient housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me;

which was, in short, but a very small favor, it being very difficult to

get any man to accept of such an employment that was fit to be intrusted

with it.

It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect which I am sensible

was of moment; namely, it confined the distempered people, who would

otherwise have been both very troublesome and very dangerous in their

running about streets with the distemper upon them, which, when they

were delirious, they would have done in a most frightful manner, as,

indeed, they began to do at first very much until they were restrained;

nay, so very open they were, that the poor would go about and beg at

people's doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for

their sores, or both, or anything that delirious nature happened to

think of.

A poor unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen's wife, was, if the

story be true, murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate Street,

or that way. He was going along the street, raving mad, to be sure, and

singing. The people only said he was drunk; but he himself said he had

the plague upon him, which, it seems, was true; and, meeting this

gentlewoman, he would kiss her. She was terribly frightened, as he was a

rude fellow, and she run from him; but, the street being very thin of

people, there was nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would

overtake her, she turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but

weak, as pushed him down backward; but very unhappily, she being so

near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, and, getting up

first, mastered her and kissed her, and, which was worst of all, when he

had done, told her he had the plague, and why should not she have it as

well as he. She was frightened enough before; but when she heard him say

he had the plague, she screamed out, and fell down into a swoon, or in a

fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her in a very few

days; and I never heard whether she had the plague or no.

Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a citizen's

house where they knew him very well. The servant let him in, and, being

told the master of the house was above, he ran up, and came into the

room to them as the whole family were at supper. They began to rise up a

little surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he bid them sit

still, he only come to take his leave of them. They asked him, "Why, Mr.

----, where are you going?"--"Going?" says he; "I have got the sickness,

and shall die to-morrow night." It is easy to believe, though not to

describe, the consternation they were all in. The women and the man's

daughters, which[239] were but little girls, were frightened almost to

death, and got up, one running out at one door and one at another, some

downstairs and some upstairs, and, getting together as well as they

could, locked themselves into their chambers, and screamed out at the

windows for help, as if they had been frightened out of their wits. The

master, more composed than they, though both frightened and provoked,

was going to lay hands on him and throw him downstairs, being in a

passion; but then, considering a little the condition of the man and the

danger of touching him, horror seized his mind, and he stood still like

one astonished. The poor distempered man, all this while, being as well

diseased in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. At

length he turns round. "Ay!" says he with all the seeming calmness

imaginable, "is it so with you all? Are you all disturbed at me? Why,

then, I'll e'en go home and die there." And so he goes immediately

downstairs. The servant that had let him in goes down after him with a

candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door; so he stood on

the stairs to see what he would do. The man went and opened the door,

and went out and flung[240] the door after him. It was some while before

the family recovered the fright; but, as no ill consequence attended,

they have had occasion since to speak of it, you may be sure, with great

satisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some time, nay, as I

heard, some days, before they recovered themselves of the hurry they

were in; nor did they go up and down the house with any assurance till

they had burned a great variety of fumes and perfumes in all the rooms,

and made a great many smokes of pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur. All

separately shifted,[241] and washed their clothes, and the like. As to

the poor man, whether he lived or died, I do not remember.

It is most certain, that if, by the shutting up of houses, the sick had

not been confined, multitudes, who in the height of their fever were

delirious and distracted, would have been continually running up and

down the streets; and even as it was, a very great number did so, and

offered all sorts of violence to those they met, even just as a mad dog

runs on and bites at every one he meets. Nor can I doubt but that,

should one of those infected diseased creatures have bitten any man or

woman while the frenzy of the distemper was upon them, they (I mean the

person so wounded) would as certainly have been incurably infected as

one that was sick before and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one infected creature, who, running out of his bed in his

shirt, in the anguish and agony of his swellings (of which he had three

upon him), got his shoes on, and went to put on his coat; but the nurse

resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he threw her down, run over

her, ran downstairs and into the street directly to the Thames, in his

shirt, the nurse running after him, and calling to the watch to stop

him. But the watchman, frightened at the man, and afraid to touch him,

let him go on; upon which he ran down to the Still-Yard Stairs, threw

away his shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer,

swam quite over the river; and the tide being "coming in," as they call

it (that is, running westward), he reached the land not till he came

about the Falcon Stairs, where, landing and finding no people there, it

being in the night, he ran about the streets there, naked as he was, for

a good while, when, it being by that time high water, he takes the

river again, and swam back to the Still Yard, landed, ran up the streets

to his own house, knocking at the door, went up the stairs, and into his

bed again; and[242] that this terrible experiment cured him of the

plague, that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs

stretched the parts where the swellings he had upon him were (that is to

say, under his arms and in his groin), and caused them to ripen and

break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood.

I have only to add, that I do not relate this, any more than some of the

other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can vouch the

truth of them; and especially that of the man being cured by the

extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not think very possible, but

it may serve to confirm the many desperate things which the distressed

people, falling into deliriums and what we call light-headedness, were

frequently run upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there

would have been if such people had not been confined by the shutting up

of houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good thing,

which was performed by that severe method.

On the other hand, the complaints and the murmurings were very bitter

against the thing itself.

It would pierce the hearts of all that came by, to hear the piteous

cries of those infected people, who, being thus out of their

understandings by the violence of their pain or the heat of their blood,

were either shut in, or perhaps tied in their beds and chairs, to

prevent their doing themselves hurt, and who would make a dreadful

outcry at their being confined, and at their being not permitted to "die

at large," as they called it, and as they would have done before.

This running of distempered people about the streets was very dismal,

and the magistrates did their utmost to prevent it; but as it was

generally in the night, and always sudden, when such attempts were made,

the officers could not be at hand to prevent it; and even when they got

out in the day, the officers appointed did not care to meddle with

them, because, as they were all grievously infected, to be sure, when

they were come to that height, so they were more than ordinarily

infectious, and it was one of the most dangerous things that could be to

touch them. On the other hand, they generally ran on, not knowing what

they did, till they dropped down stark dead, or till they had exhausted

their spirits so as that they would fall and then die in perhaps half an

hour or an hour; and, which was most piteous to hear, they were sure to

come to themselves entirely in that half hour or hour, and then to make

most grievous and piercing cries and lamentations, in the deep

afflicting sense of the condition they were in. There was much of it

before the order for shutting up of houses was strictly put into

execution; for at first the watchmen were not so rigorous and severe as

they were afterwards in the keeping the people in; that is to say,

before they were (I mean some of them) severely punished for their

neglect, failing in their duty, and letting people who were under their

care slip away, or conniving at their going abroad, whether sick or

well. But after they saw the officers appointed to examine into their

conduct were resolved to have them do their duty, or be punished for the

omission, they were more exact, and the people were strictly restrained;

which was a thing they took so ill, and bore so impatiently, that their

discontents can hardly be described; but there was an absolute necessity

for it, that must be confessed, unless some other measures had been

timely entered upon, and it was too late for that.

Had not this particular of the sick being restrained as above been our

case at that time, London would have been the most dreadful place that

ever was in the world. There would, for aught I know, have as many

people died in the streets as died in their houses: for when the

distemper was at its height, it generally made them raving and

delirious; and when they were so, they would never be persuaded to keep

in their beds but by force; and many who were not tied threw themselves

out of windows when they found they could not get leave to go out of

their doors.

It was for want of people conversing one with another in this time of

calamity, that it was impossible any particular person could come at the

knowledge of all the extraordinary cases that occurred in different

families; and particularly, I believe it was never known to this day how

many people in their deliriums drowned themselves in the Thames, and in

the river which runs from the marshes by Hackney, which we generally

called Ware River or Hackney River. As to those which were set down in

the weekly bill, they were indeed few. Nor could it be known of any of

those, whether they drowned themselves by accident or not; but I believe

I might reckon up more who, within the compass of my knowledge or

observation, really drowned themselves in that year than are put down in

the bill of all put together, for many of the bodies were never found

who yet were known to be lost; and the like in other methods of

self-destruction. There was also one man in or about Whitecross Street

burnt himself to death in his bed. Some said it was done by himself,

others that it was by the treachery of the nurse that attended him; but

that he had the plague upon him, was agreed by all.

It was a merciful disposition of Providence, also, and which I have many

times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable ones at

least, happened in the city during that year, which, if it had been

otherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the people must

have let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great crowds

and throngs, unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not concerned

at the houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at the

persons or the people they came among. But so it was, that excepting

that in Cripplegate Parish, and two or three little eruptions of fires,

which were presently extinguished, there was no disaster of that kind

happened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house in a place

called Swan Alley, passing from Goswell Street near the end of Old

Street into St. John Street, that a family was infected there in so

terrible a manner that every one of the house died. The last person lay

dead on the floor, and, as it is supposed, had laid herself all along

to die just before the fire. The fire, it seems, had fallen from its

place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the joists

they lay on, and burned as far as just to the body, but had not taken

hold of the dead body, though she had little more than her shift on, and

had gone out of itself, not hurting the rest of the house, though it was

a slight timber house. How true this might be, I do not determine; but

the city being to suffer severely the next year by fire, this year it

felt very little of that calamity.

Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people into, and

how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were alone, they did

many desperate things, it was very strange there were no more disasters

of that kind.

It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever knew how

to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that so many infected

people appeared abroad in the streets at the same time that the houses

which were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of them shut up

and guarded as they were.

I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be this:

that, in so great and populous a city as this is, it was impossible to

discover every house that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shut

up all the houses that were infected; so that people had the liberty of

going about the streets, even where they pleased, unless they were known

to belong to such and such infected houses.

It is true, that, as the several physicians told my lord mayor, the fury

of the contagion was such at some particular times, and people sickened

so fast and died so soon, that it was impossible, and indeed to no

purpose, to go about to inquire who was sick and who was well, or to

shut them up with such exactness as the thing required, almost every

house in a whole street being infected, and in many places every person

in some of the houses. And, that which was still worse, by the time that

the houses were known to be infected, most of the persons infected would

be stone dead, and the rest run away for fear of being shut up; so that

it was to very small purpose to call them infected houses and shut them

up, the infection having ravaged and taken its leave of the house before

it was really known that the family was any way touched.

This might be sufficient to convince any reasonable person, that as it

was not in the power of the magistrates, or of any human methods or

policy, to prevent the spreading the infection, so that this way of

shutting up of houses was perfectly insufficient for that end. Indeed,

it seemed to have no manner of public good in it equal or proportionable

to the grievous burthen that it was to the particular families that were

so shut up; and, as far as I was employed by the public in directing

that severity, I frequently found occasion to see that it was incapable

of answering the end. For example, as I was desired as a visitor or

examiner to inquire into the particulars of several families which were

infected, we scarce came to any house where the plague had visibly

appeared in the family but that some of the family were fled and gone.

The magistrates would resent this, and charge the examiners with being

remiss in their examination or inspection; but by that means houses were

long infected before it was known. Now, as I was in this dangerous

office but half the appointed time, which was two months, it was long

enough to inform myself that we were no way capable of coming at the

knowledge of the true state of any family but by inquiring at the door

or of the neighbors. As for going into every house to search, that was a

part no authority would offer to impose on the inhabitants, or any

citizen would undertake; for it would have been exposing us to certain

infection and death, and to the ruin of our own families as well as of

ourselves. Nor would any citizen of probity, and that could be depended

upon, have staid in the town if they had been made liable to such a

severity.

Seeing, then, that we could come at the certainty of things by no method

but that of inquiry of the neighbors or of the family (and on that we

could not justly depend), it was not possible but that the uncertainty

of this matter would remain as above.

It is true, masters of families were bound by the order to give notice

to the examiner of the place wherein he lived, within two hours after he

should discover it, of any person being sick in his house, that is to

say, having signs of the infection; but they found so many ways to evade

this, and excuse their negligence, that they seldom gave that notice

till they had taken measures to have every one escape out of the house

who had a mind to escape, whether they were sick or sound. And while

this was so, it was easy to see that the shutting up of houses was no

way to be depended upon as a sufficient method for putting a stop to the

infection, because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that so went

out of those infected houses had the plague really upon them, though

they might really think themselves sound; and some of these were the

people that walked the streets till they fell down dead: not that they

were suddenly struck with the distemper, as with a bullet that killed

with the stroke, but that they really had the infection in their blood

long before, only that, as it preyed secretly on their vitals, it

appeared not till it seized the heart with a mortal power, and the

patient died in a moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic

fit.

I know that some, even of our physicians, thought for a time that those

people that so died in the streets were seized but that moment they

fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from heaven, as men are

killed by a flash of lightning; but they found reason to alter their

opinion afterward, for, upon examining the bodies of such after they

were dead, they always either had tokens upon them, or other evident

proofs of the distemper having been longer upon them than they had

otherwise expected.

This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were examiners

were not able to come at the knowledge of the infection being entered

into a house till it was too late to shut it up, and sometimes not till

the people that were left were all dead. In Petticoat Lane two houses

together were infected, and several people sick; but the distemper was

so well concealed, the examiner, who was my neighbor, got no knowledge

of it till notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that

the carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the

families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters as that,

when the examiner was in the neighborhood, they appeared generally at a

time, and answered, that is, lied for one another, or got some of the

neighborhood to say they were all in health, and perhaps knew no better;

till, death making it impossible to keep it any longer as a secret, the

dead carts were called in the night to both the houses, and so it became

public. But when the examiner ordered the constable to shut up the

houses, there was nobody left in them but three people (two in one

house, and one in the other), just dying, and a nurse in each house, who

acknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses had been

infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of the two

families, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, or,

whether sick or well, could not be known.

In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man, having his

family infected, but very unwilling to be shut up, when he could conceal

it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he set the great red

cross upon the door, with the words, "LORD, HAVE MERCY UPON US!" and so

deluded the examiner, who supposed it had been done by the constable, by

order of the other examiner (for there were two examiners to every

district or precinct). By this means he had free egress and regress into

his house again and out of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it was

infected, till at length his stratagem was found out, and then he, with

the sound part of his family and servants, made off and escaped; so they

were not shut up at all.

These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have said, to

prevent the spreading of an infection by the shutting up of houses,

unless the people would think the shutting up of their houses no

grievance, and be so willing to have it done as that they would give

notice duly and faithfully to the magistrates of their being infected,

as soon as it was known by themselves; but as that cannot be expected

from them, and the examiners cannot be supposed, as above, to go into

their houses to visit and search, all the good of shutting up houses

will be defeated, and few houses will be shut up in time, except those

of the poor, who cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be

discovered by the terror and consternation which the thing put them

into.

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon as I

could get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little money to

accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months, which was

directed, I was not above three weeks in it; and a great while too,

considering it was in the month of August, at which time the distemper

began to rage with great violence at our end of the town.

In the execution of this office, I could not refrain speaking my opinion

among my neighbors as to the shutting up the people in their houses, in

which we saw most evidently the severities that were used, though

grievous in themselves, had also this particular objection against them;

namely, that they did not answer the end, as I have said, but that the

distempered people went day by day about the streets. And it was our

united opinion that a method to have removed the sound from the sick, in

case of a particular house being visited, would have been much more

reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons but

such as should, on such occasions, request to stay, and declare

themselves content to be shut up with them.

Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that were sick

was only in such houses as were infected; and confining the sick was no

confinement: those that could not stir would not complain while they

were in their senses, and while they had the power of judging. Indeed,

when they came to be delirious and light-headed, then they would cry out

of[243] the cruelty of being confined; but, for the removal of those

that were well, we thought it highly reasonable and just, for their own

sakes, they should be removed from the sick, and that, for other

people's safety, they should keep retired for a while, to see that they

were sound, and might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty

days enough for this.

Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those that

were sound, to perform this demiquarantine in, they would have much less

reason to think themselves injured in such a restraint than in being

confined with infected people in the houses where they lived.

It is here, however, to be observed, that after the funerals became so

many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black

for one another, as they did before, no, nor so much as make coffins for

those that died, so, after a while, the fury of the infection appeared

to be so increased, that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It

seemed enough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till they

were found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an

irresistible fury; so that, as the fire the succeeding year spread

itself and burnt with such violence that the citizens in despair gave

over their endeavors to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last

to such violence, that the people sat still looking at one another, and

seemed quite abandoned to despair. Whole streets seemed to be desolated,

and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their inhabitants:

doors were left open, windows stood shattering with the wind in empty

houses, for want of people to shut them. In a word, people began to give

up themselves to their fears, and to think that all regulations and

methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an

universal desolation. And it was even in the height of this general

despair that it pleased God to stay his hand, and to slacken the fury of

the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its

beginning, and demonstrated it to be his own particular hand; and that

above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take notice of in

its proper place.

But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, raging even to

desolation, and the people under the most dreadful consternation, even,

as I have said, to despair. It is hardly credible to what excesses the

passions of men carried them in this extremity of the distemper; and

this part, I think, was as moving as the rest. What could affect a man

in his full power of reflection, and what could make deeper impressions

on the soul, than to see a man almost naked, and got out of his house or

perhaps out of his bed into the street, come out of Harrow Alley, a

populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts, and passages, in

the Butcher Row in Whitechapel,--I say, what could be more affecting

than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run, dancing

and singing, and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six

women and children running after him, crying and calling upon him for

the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring

him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him, or to

come near him?

This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it all from

my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted man was, as I

observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain, having, as they

said, two swellings upon him, which could not be brought to break or to

suppurate; but by laying strong caustics on them the surgeons had, it

seems, hopes to break them, which caustics were then upon him, burning

his flesh as with a hot iron. I cannot say what became of this poor man,

but I think he continued roving about in that manner till he fell down

and died.

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual

concourse of the people in the streets, and which used to be supplied

from our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept shut,

indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost: they had

been almost extinguished for some days by a very smart and hasty rain.

But that was not all. Some of the physicians insisted that they were not

only no benefit, but injurious to the health of the people. This they

made a loud clamor about, and complained to the lord mayor about it. On

the other hand, others of the same faculty, and eminent too, opposed

them, and gave their reasons why the fires were and must be useful to

assuage the violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of

their arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they caviled

very much with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be

made of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as

fir, in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of

turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur

and bitumen; and others were neither for one or other. Upon the whole,

the lord mayor ordered no more fires, and especially on this account,

namely, that the plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied

all means, and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any

application to check and abate it; and yet this amazement of the

magistrates proceeded rather from want of being able to apply any means

successfully than from any unwillingness either to expose themselves or

undertake the care and weight of business; for, to do them justice, they

neither spared their pains nor their persons. But nothing answered. The

infection raged, and the people were now terrified to the last degree,

so that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned

above, abandoned themselves to their despair.

But let me observe here, that when I say the people abandoned themselves

to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious despair, or a

despair of their eternal state; but I mean a despair of their being able

to escape the infection, or to outlive the plague, which they saw was so

raging, and so irresistible in its force, that indeed few people that

were touched with it in its height, about August and September, escaped;

and, which is very particular, contrary to its ordinary operation in

June and July and the beginning of August, when, as I have observed,

many were infected, and continued so many days, and then went off, after

having had the poison in their blood a long time. But now, on the

contrary, most of the people who were taken during the last two weeks in

August, and in the first three weeks in September, generally died in two

or three days at the farthest, and many the very same day they were

taken. Whether the dog days[244] (as our astrologers pretended to

express themselves, the influence of the Dog Star) had that malignant

effect, or all those who had the seeds of infection before in them

brought it up to a maturity at that time altogether, I know not; but

this was the time when it was reported that above three thousand people

died in one night; and they that would have us believe they more

critically observed it pretend to say that they all died within the

space of two hours, viz., between the hours of one and three in the

morning.

As to the suddenness of people dying at this time, more than before,

there were innumerable instances of it, and I could name several in my

neighborhood. One family without the bars, and not far from me, were all

seemingly well on the Monday, being ten in family. That evening one maid

and one apprentice were taken ill, and died the next morning, when the

other apprentice and two children were touched, whereof one died the

same evening and the other two on Wednesday. In a word, by Saturday at

noon the master, mistress, four children, and four servants were all

gone, and the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman, who

came to take charge of the goods for the master of the family's brother,

who lived not far off, and who had not been sick.

Many houses were then left desolate, all the people being carried away

dead; and especially in an alley farther on the same side beyond the

bars, going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron.[245] There were several

houses together, which they said had not one person left alive in them;

and some that died last in several of those houses were left a little

too long before they were fetched out to be buried, the reason of which

was not, as some have written very untruly, that the living were not

sufficient to bury the dead, but that the mortality was so great in the

yard or alley that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriers

or sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried. It was

said, how true I know not, that some of those bodies were so corrupted

and so rotten, that it was with difficulty they were carried; and, as

the carts could not come any nearer than to the alley gate in the High

Street, it was so much the more difficult to bring them along. But I am

not certain how many bodies were then left: I am sure that ordinarily it

was not so.

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to

despair of life, and abandoned themselves, so this very thing had a

strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them

bold and venturous. They were no more shy of one another, or restrained

within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse.

One would say to another, "I do not ask you how you are, or say how I

am. It is certain we shall all go: so 'tis no matter who is sick or who

is sound." And so they ran desperately into any place or company.

As it brought the people into public company, so it was surprising how

it brought them to crowd into the churches. They inquired no more into

who[246] they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met

with, or what condition the people seemed to be in; but, looking upon

themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches

without the least caution, and crowded together as if their lives were

of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there.

Indeed, the zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness and

affection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made it

manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if

they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be

their last. Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away

all manner of prejudice at, or scruple about, the person whom they found

in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but

that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off among

others in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had not courage

enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for

escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the

people made no scruple of desiring such dissenters as had been a few

years before deprived of their livings, by virtue of an act of

Parliament called the "Act of Uniformity,"[247] to preach in the

churches, nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty

in accepting their assistance; so that many of those whom they called

silent ministers had their mouths opened on this occasion, and preached

publicly to the people.

Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of

it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good

principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy

situation in life, and our putting these things far from us, that our

breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of

charity and of Christian union so much kept and so far carried on among

us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences;

a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death,

would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among

us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked

on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the

church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the dissenters to

preach to them, so the dissenters, who, with an uncommon prejudice, had

broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content

to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which

they did not approve of before. But, as the terror of the infection

abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable

channel, and to the course they were in before.

I mention this but historically: I have no mind to enter into arguments

to move either or both sides to a more charitable compliance one with

another. I do not see that it is probable such a discourse would be

either suitable or successful; the breaches seem rather to widen, and

tend to a widening farther, than to closing: and who am I, that I should

think myself able to influence either one side or other? But this I may

repeat again, that it is evident death will reconcile us all: on the

other side the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whither

I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find

neither prejudice nor scruple: there we shall be of one principle and of

one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand to the place

where we shall join heart and hand without the least hesitation, and

with the most complete harmony and affection,--I say, why we cannot do

so here, I can say nothing to; neither shall I say anything more of it,

but that it remains to be lamented.

I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time,

and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us every day,--the

dreadful extravagances which the distraction of sick people drove them

into; how the streets began now to be fuller of frightful objects, and

families to be made even a terror to themselves. But after I have told

you, as I have above, that one man being tied in his bed, and finding no

other way to deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle (which

unhappily stood within his reach), and burned himself in bed; and how

another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and sung naked in

the streets, not knowing one ecstasy[248] from another,--I say, after I

have mentioned these things, what can be added more? What can be said to

represent the misery of these times more lively to the reader, or to

give him a perfect idea of a more complicated distress?

I must acknowledge that this time was so terrible that I was sometimes

at the end of all my resolutions, and that I had not the courage that I

had at the beginning. As the extremity brought other people abroad, it

drove me home; and, except having made my voyage down to Blackwall and

Greenwich, as I have related, which was an excursion, I kept afterwards

very much within doors, as I had for about a fortnight before. I have

said already that I repented several times that I had ventured to stay

in town, and had not gone away with my brother and his family; but it

was too late for that now. And after I had retreated and staid within

doors a good while before my impatience led me abroad, then they called

me, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous office, which brought me

out again; but as that was expired, while the height of the distemper

lasted I retired again, and continued close ten or twelve days more,

during which many dismal spectacles represented themselves in my

view,[249] out of my own windows, and in our own street, as that

particularly, from Harrow Alley, of the poor outrageous creature who

danced and sung in his agony; and many others there were. Scarce a day

or a night passed over but some dismal thing or other happened at the

end of that Harrow Alley, which was a place full of poor people, most of

them belonging to the butchers, or to employments depending upon the

butchery.

Sometimes heaps and throngs of people would burst out of the alley, most

of them women, making a dreadful clamor, mixed or compounded of

screeches, cryings, and calling one another, that we could not conceive

what to make of it. Almost all the dead part of the night,[250] the dead

cart stood at the end of that alley; for if it went in, it could not

well turn again, and could go in but a little way. There, I say, it

stood to receive dead bodies; and, as the churchyard was but a little

way off, if it went away full, it would soon be back again. It is

impossible to describe the most horrible cries and noise the poor people

would make at their bringing the dead bodies of their children and

friends out to the cart; and, by the number, one would have thought

there had been none left behind, or that there were people enough for a

small city living in those places. Several times they cried murder,

sometimes fire; but it was easy to perceive that it was all distraction

and the complaints of distressed and distempered people.

I believe it was everywhere thus at that time, for the plague raged for

six or seven weeks beyond all that I have expressed, and came even to

such a height, that, in the extremity, they began to break into that

excellent order of which I have spoken so much in behalf of the

magistrates, namely, that no dead bodies were seen in the streets, or

burials in the daytime; for there was a necessity in this extremity to

bear with its being otherwise for a little while.

One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was extraordinary,

at least it seemed a remarkable hand of divine justice; viz., that all

the predictors, astrologers, fortune tellers, and what they called

cunning men, conjurers, and the like, calculators of nativities, and

dreamers of dreams, and such people, were gone and vanished; not one of

them was to be found. I am verily persuaded that a great number of them

fell in the heat of the calamity, having ventured to stay upon the

prospect of getting great estates; and indeed their gain was but too

great for a time, through the madness and folly of the people: but now

they were silent; many of them went to their long home, not able to

foretell their own fate, or to calculate their own nativities. Some have

been critical enough to say[251] that every one of them died. I dare not

affirm that; but this I must own, that I never heard of one of them that

ever appeared after the calamity was over.

But to return to my particular observations during this dreadful part

of the visitation. I am now come, as I have said, to the month of

September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I believe, that ever

London saw; for, by all the accounts which I have seen of the preceding

visitations which have been in London, nothing has been like it, the

number in the weekly bill amounting to almost forty thousands from the

22d of August to the 26th of September, being but five weeks. The

particulars of the bills are as follows: viz.,--

Aug. 22 to Aug. 29 7,496

Aug. 29 to Sept. 5 8,252

Sept. 5 to Sept. 12 7,690

Sept. 12 to Sept. 19 8,297

Sept. 19 to Sept. 26 6,460

------

38,195

This was a prodigious number of itself; but if I should add the reasons

which I have to believe that this account was deficient, and how

deficient it was, you would with me make no scruple to believe that

there died above ten thousand a week for all those weeks, one week with

another, and a proportion for several weeks, both before and after. The

confusion among the people, especially within the city, at that time was

inexpressible. The terror was so great at last, that the courage of the

people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several

of them died, although they had the distemper before, and were

recovered; and some of them dropped down when they have been carrying

the bodies even at the pitside, and just ready to throw them in. And

this confusion was greater in the city, because they had flattered

themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of death

was past. One cart, they told us, going up Shoreditch, was forsaken by

the drivers, or, being left to one man to drive, he died in the street;

and the horses, going on, overthrew the cart, and left the bodies, some

thrown here, some there, in a dismal manner. Another cart was, it seems,

found in the great pit in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or

having been gone and abandoned it; and the horses running too near it,

the cart fell in, and drew the horses in also. It was suggested that the

driver was thrown in with it, and that the cart fell upon him, by reason

his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bodies; but that, I

suppose, could not be certain.

In our parish of Aldgate the dead carts were several times, as I have

heard, found standing at the churchyard gate full of dead bodies, but

neither bellman, or driver, or any one else, with it. Neither in these

or many other cases did they know what bodies they had in their cart,

for sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and out of

windows, and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes

other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they trouble

themselves to keep any account of the numbers.

The vigilance of the magistrate was now put to the utmost trial, and, it

must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged on this occasion;

also, whatever expense or trouble they were at, two things were never

neglected in the city or suburbs either:--

1. Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not

much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.

2. No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if any one walked from

one end of the city to another, no funeral, or sign of it, was to be

seen in the daytime, except a little, as I have said, in the first three

weeks in September.

This last article, perhaps, will hardly be believed when some accounts

which others have published since that shall be seen, wherein they say

that the dead lay unburied, which I am sure was utterly false; at least,

if it had been anywhere so, it must have been in houses where the living

were gone from the dead, having found means, as I have observed, to

escape, and where no notice was given to the officers. All which amounts

to nothing at all in the case in hand; for this I am positive in, having

myself been employed a little in the direction of that part of the

parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was made, in

proportion to the number of the inhabitants, as was anywhere. I say, I

am sure that there were no dead bodies remained unburied; that is to

say, none that the proper officers knew of, none for want of people to

carry them off, and buriers to put them into the ground and cover them.

And this is sufficient to the argument; for what might lie in houses and

holes, as in Moses and Aaron Alley, is nothing, for it is most certain

they were buried as soon as they were found. As to the first article,

namely, of provisions, the scarcity or dearness, though I have mentioned

it before, and shall speak of it again, yet I must observe here.

1. The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in the

beginning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the penny

wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half, and in the height of the

contagion it was to be had at nine ounces and a half, and never dearer,

no, not all that season; and about the beginning of November it was sold

at ten ounces and a half again, the like of which, I believe, was never

heard of, in any city under so dreadful a visitation, before.

2. Neither was there, which I wondered much at, any want of bakers or

ovens kept open to supply the people with bread; but this was indeed

alleged by some families, viz., that their maidservants, going to the

bakehouses with their dough to be baked, which was then the custom,

sometimes came home with the sickness, that is to say, the plague, upon

them.

In all this dreadful visitation there were, as I have said before, but

two pesthouses made use of; viz., one in the fields beyond Old Street,

and one in Westminster. Neither was there any compulsion used in

carrying people thither. Indeed, there was no need of compulsion in the

case, for there were thousands of poor distressed people, who having no

help, or conveniences, or supplies, but of charity, would have been very

glad to have been carried thither and been taken care of; which, indeed,

was the only thing that, I think, was wanting in the whole public

management of the city, seeing nobody was here allowed to be brought to

the pesthouse but where money was given, or security for money, either

at their introducing,[252] or upon their being cured and sent out; for

very many were sent out again whole, and very good physicians were

appointed to those places; so that many people did very well there, of

which I shall make mention again. The principal sort of people sent

thither were, as I have said, servants, who got the distemper by going

of errands to fetch necessaries for the families where they lived, and

who, in that case, if they came home sick, were removed to preserve the

rest of the house; and they were so well looked after there, in all the

time of the visitation, that there was but one hundred and fifty-six

buried in all at the London pesthouse, and one hundred and fifty-nine at

that of Westminster.

By having more pesthouses, I am far from meaning a forcing all people

into such places. Had the shutting up of houses been omitted, and the

sick hurried out of their dwellings to pesthouses, as some proposed it

seems at that time as well as since, it[253] would certainly have been

much worse than it was. The very removing the sick would have been a

spreading of the infection, and the rather because that removing could

not effectually clear the house where the sick person was of the

distemper; and the rest of the family, being then left at liberty, would

certainly spread it among others.

The methods, also, in private families which would have been universally

used to have concealed the distemper, and to have concealed the persons

being sick, would have been such that the distemper would sometimes have

seized a whole family before any visitors or examiners could have known

of it. On the other hand, the prodigious numbers which would have been

sick at a time would have exceeded all the capacity of public pesthouses

to receive them, or of public officers to discover and remove them.

This was well considered in those days, and I have heard them talk of it

often. The magistrates had enough to do to bring people to submit to

having their houses shut up; and many ways they deceived the watchmen,

and got out, as I observed. But that difficulty made it apparent that

they would have found it impracticable to have gone the other way to

work; for they could never have forced the sick people out of their beds

and out of their dwellings: it must not have been my lord mayor's

officers, but an army of officers, that must have attempted it. And the

people, on the other hand, would have been enraged and desperate, and

would have killed those that should have offered to have meddled with

them or with their children and relations, whatever had befallen them

for it; so that they would have made the people (who, as it was, were in

the most terrible distraction imaginable), I say, they would have made

them stark mad: whereas the magistrates found it proper on several

occasions to treat them with lenity and compassion, and not with

violence and terror, such as dragging the sick out of their houses, or

obliging them to remove themselves, would have been.

This leads me again to mention the time when the plague first

began,[254] that is to say, when it became certain that it would spread

over the whole town, when, as I have said, the better sort of people

first took the alarm, and began to hurry themselves out of town. It was

true, as I observed in its place, that the throng was so great, and the

coaches, horses, wagons, and carts were so many, driving and dragging

the people away, that it looked as if all the city was running away; and

had any regulations been published that had been terrifying at that

time, especially such as would pretend to dispose of the people

otherwise than they would dispose of themselves, it would have put both

the city and suburbs into the utmost confusion.

The magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged, made very

good by-laws[255] for the regulating the citizens, keeping good order in

the streets, and making everything as eligible as possible to all sorts

of people.

In the first place, the lord mayor and the sheriffs,[256] the court of

aldermen, and a certain number of the common councilmen, or their

deputies, came to a resolution, and published it; viz., that they would

not quit the city themselves, but that they would be always at hand for

the preserving good order in every place, and for doing justice on all

occasions, as also for the distributing the public charity to the poor,

and, in a word, for the doing the duty and discharging the trust reposed

in them by the citizens, to the utmost of their power.

In pursuance of these orders, the lord mayor, sheriffs, etc., held

councils every day, more or less, for making such dispositions as they

found needful for preserving the civil peace; and though they used the

people with all possible gentleness and clemency, yet all manner of

presumptuous rogues, such as thieves, housebreakers, plunderers of the

dead or of the sick, were duly punished; and several declarations were

continually published by the lord mayor and court of aldermen against

such.

Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay in the city

upon severe penalties, or to depute such able and sufficient

housekeepers as the deputy aldermen or common councilmen of the precinct

should approve, and for whom they should give security, and also

security, in case of mortality, that they would forthwith constitute

other constables in their stead.

These things reëstablished the minds of the people very much, especially

in the first of their fright, when they talked of making so universal a

flight that the city would have been in danger of being entirely

deserted of its inhabitants, except the poor, and the country of being

plundered and laid waste by the multitude. Nor were the magistrates

deficient in performing their part as boldly as they promised it; for my

lord mayor and the sheriffs were continually in the streets and at

places of the greatest danger; and though they did not care for having

too great a resort of people crowding about them, yet in emergent cases

they never denied the people access to them, and heard with patience

all their grievances and complaints. My lord mayor had a low gallery

built on purpose in his hall, where he stood, a little removed from the

crowd, when any complaint came to be heard, that he might appear with as

much safety as possible.

Likewise the proper officers, called my lord mayor's officers,

constantly attended in their turns, as they were in waiting; and if any

of them were sick or infected, as some of them were, others were

instantly employed to fill up, and officiate in their places till it was

known whether the other should live or die.

In like manner the sheriffs and aldermen did,[257] in their several

stations and wards, where they were placed by office; and the sheriff's

officers or sergeants were appointed to receive orders from the

respective aldermen in their turn; so that justice was executed in all

cases without interruption. In the next place, it was one of their

particular cares to see the orders for the freedom of the markets

observed; and in this part either the lord mayor, or one or both of the

sheriffs, were every market day on horseback to see their orders

executed, and to see that the country people had all possible

encouragement and freedom in their coming to the markets and going back

again, and that no nuisance or frightful object should be seen in the

streets to terrify them, or make them unwilling to come. Also the bakers

were taken under particular order, and the master of the Bakers' Company

was, with his court of assistants, directed to see the order of my lord

mayor for their regulation put in execution, and the due assize[258] of

bread, which was weekly appointed by my lord mayor, observed; and all

the bakers were obliged to keep their ovens going constantly, on pain of

losing the privileges of a freeman of the city of London.

By this means, bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheap as

usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in the

markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it, and

reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in stirring

abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly to market, as if

there had been no manner of infection in the city, or danger of catching

it.

It was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said magistrates,

that the streets were kept constantly clear and free from all manner of

frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such things as were indecent or

unpleasant; unless where anybody fell down suddenly, or died in the

streets, as I have said above, and these were generally covered with

some cloth or blanket, or removed into the next churchyard till night.

All the needful works that carried terror with them, that were both

dismal and dangerous, were done in the night. If any diseased bodies

were removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burned, it was

done in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into the great

pits in the several churchyards or burying grounds, as has been

observed, were so removed in the night, and everything was covered and

closed before day. So that in the daytime there was not the least signal

of the calamity to be seen or heard of, except what was to be observed

from the emptiness of the streets, and sometimes from the passionate

outcries and lamentations of the people, out at their windows, and from

the numbers of houses and shops shut up.

Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the city as

in the outparts, except just at one particular time, when, as I have

mentioned, the plague came east, and spread over all the city. It was

indeed a merciful disposition of God, that as the plague began at one

end of the town first, as has been observed at large, so it proceeded

progressively to other parts, and did not come on this way, or eastward,

till it had spent its fury in the west part of the town; and so as it

came on one way it abated another. For example:--

It began at St. Giles's and the Westminster end of the town, and it was

in its height in all that part by about the middle of July, viz., in St.

Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Andrew's, Holborn, St. Clement's-Danes, St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster. The latter end of July it

decreased in those parishes, and, coming east, it increased prodigiously

in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre's, St. James's, Clerkenwell, and St.

Bride's and Aldersgate. While it was in all these parishes, the city and

all the parishes of the Southwark side of the water, and all Stepney,

Whitechapel, Aldgate, Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched;

so that people went about their business unconcerned, carried on their

trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in

all the city, the east and northeast suburbs, and in Southwark, almost

as if the plague had not been among us.

Even when the north and northwest suburbs were fully infected, viz.,

Cripplegate, Clerkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet still all the

rest were tolerably well. For example:--

From the 25th of July to the 1st of August the bill stood thus of all

diseases:--

St. Giles's, Cripplegate 554

St. Sepulchre's 250

Clerkenwell 103

Bishopsgate 116

Shoreditch 110

Stepney Parish 127

Aldgate 92

Whitechapel 104

All the 97 parishes within the walls 228

All the parishes in Southwark 205

-----

1,889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes of

Cripplegate and St. Sepulchre's by forty-eight than all the city, all

the east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put together. This

caused the reputation of the city's health to continue all over England,

and especially in the counties and markets adjacent, from whence our

supply of provisions chiefly came, even much longer than that health

itself continued; for when the people came into the streets from the

country by Shoreditch and Bishopsgate, or by Old Street and Smithfield,

they would see the outstreets empty, and the houses and shops shut, and

the few people that were stirring there walk in the middle of the

streets; but when they came within the city, there things looked better,

and the markets and shops were open, and the people walking about the

streets as usual, though not quite so many; and this continued till the

latter end of August and the beginning of September.

But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west and

northwest parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on the city and

the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and this in a frightful

manner.

Then indeed the city began to look dismal, shops to be shut, and the

streets desolate. In the High Street, indeed, necessity made people stir

abroad on many occasions; and there would be in the middle of the day a

pretty many[259] people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any to

be seen even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.

These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the weekly bills

of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which, as they respect the

parishes which I have mentioned, and as they make the calculations I

speak of very evident, take as follows.

The weekly bill which makes out this decrease of the burials in the west

and north side of the city stands thus:--

St. Giles's, Cripplegate 456

St. Giles-in-the-Fields 140

Clerkenwell 77

St. Sepulchre's 214

St. Leonard, Shoreditch 183

Stepney Parish 716

Aldgate 629

Whitechapel 532

In the 97 parishes within the walls 1,493

In the 8 parishes on Southwark side 1,636

-----

6,076

Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it was;

and, had it held for two months more than it did, very few people would

have been left alive; but then such, I say, was the merciful disposition

of God, that when it was thus, the west and north part, which had been

so dreadfully visited at first, grew, as you see, much better; and, as

the people disappeared here, they began to look abroad again there; and

the next week or two altered it still more, that is, more to the

encouragement of the other part of the town. For example:--

Sept. 19-26.

St. Giles's, Cripplegate 277

St. Giles-in-the-Fields 119

Clerkenwell 76

St. Sepulchre's 193

St. Leonard, Shoreditch 146

Stepney Parish 616

Aldgate 496

Whitechapel 346

In the 97 parishes within the walls 1,268

In the 8 parishes on Southwark side 1,390

-----

4,927

Sept. 26-Oct. 3.

St. Giles's, Cripplegate 196

St. Giles-in-the-Fields 95

Clerkenwell 48

St. Sepulchre's 137

St. Leonard, Shoreditch 128

Stepney Parish 674

Aldgate 372

Whitechapel 328

In the 97 parishes within the walls 1,149

In the 8 parishes on Southwark side 1,201

-----

4,328

And now the misery of the city, and of the said east and south parts,

was complete indeed; for, as you see, the weight of the distemper lay

upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the eight parishes over the

river, with the parishes of Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Stepney, and this

was the time that the bills came up to such a monstrous height as that I

mentioned before, and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten or

twelve thousand a week died; for it is my settled opinion that they[260]

never could come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasons

which I have given already.

Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published in

Latin an account of those times and of his observations, says that in

one week there died twelve thousand people, and that particularly there

died four thousand in one night; though I do not remember that there

ever was any such particular night so remarkably fatal as that such a

number died in it. However, all this confirms what I have said above of

the uncertainty of the bills of mortality, etc., of which I shall say

more hereafter.

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a

repetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserable

condition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived, at this

particular time. The city, and those other parts, notwithstanding the

great numbers of people that were gone into the country, was[261] vastly

full of people; and perhaps the fuller because people had for a long

time a strong belief that the plague would not come into the city, nor

into Southwark, no, nor into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was

the assurance of the people on that head, that many removed from the

suburbs on the west and north sides into those eastern and south sides

as for safety, and, as I verily believe, carried the plague amongst them

there, perhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it.

Here, also, I ought to leave a further remark for the use of posterity,

concerning the manner of people's infecting one another; namely, that it

was not the sick people only from whom the plague was immediately

received by others that were sound, but the well. To explain myself: by

the sick people, I mean those who were known to be sick, had taken

their beds, had been under cure, or had swellings or tumors upon them,

and the like. These everybody could beware of: they were either in their

beds, or in such condition as could not be concealed.

By the well, I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it

really upon them and in their blood, yet did not show the consequences

of it in their countenances; nay, even were not sensible of it

themselves, as many were not for several days. These breathed death in

every place, and upon everybody who came near them; nay, their very

clothes retained the infection; their hands would infect the things they

touched, especially if they were warm and sweaty, and they were

generally apt to sweat, too.

Now, it was impossible to know these people, nor did they sometimes, as

I have said, know themselves, to be infected. These were the people that

so often dropped down and fainted in the streets; for oftentimes they

would go about the streets to the last, till on a sudden they would

sweat, grow faint, sit down at a door, and die. It is true, finding

themselves thus, they would struggle hard to get home to their own

doors, or at other times would be just able to go into their houses, and

die instantly. Other times they would go about till they had the very

tokens come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour

or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were abroad.

These were the dangerous people; these were the people of whom the well

people ought to have been afraid: but then, on the other side, it was

impossible to know them.

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to prevent

the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance; viz., that it

is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that the

infected people should perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who

conversed freely in London all the season of the plague in 1665, and

kept about him an antidote or cordial, on purpose to take when he

thought himself in any danger; and he had such a rule to know, or have

warning of the danger by, as indeed I never met with before or since:

how far it may be depended on, I know not. He had a wound in his leg;

and whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the

infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that signal,

viz., that the wound in his leg would smart, and look pale and white: so

as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time for him to withdraw, or to

take care of himself, taking his drink, which he always carried about

him for that purpose. Now, it seems he found his wound would smart many

times when he was in company with such who thought themselves to be

sound, and who appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise

up, and say publicly, "Friends, here is somebody in the room that has

the plague," and so would immediately break up the company. This was,

indeed, a faithful monitor to all people, that the plague is not to be

avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town infected, and

people have it when they know it not, and that they likewise give it to

others when they know not that they have it themselves; and in this

case, shutting up the well or removing the sick will not do it, unless

they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had conversed with,

even before they knew themselves to be sick; and none knows how far to

carry that back, or where to stop, for none knows when, or where, or

how, they may have received the infection, or from whom.

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the air

being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be cautious of whom

they converse with, for that the contagion was in the air. I have seen

them in strange agitations and surprises on this account. "I have never

come near any infected body," says the disturbed person; "I have

conversed with none but sound healthy people, and yet I have gotten the

distemper." "I am sure I am struck from Heaven," says another, and he

falls to the serious part.[262] Again the first goes on exclaiming, "I

have come near no infection, or any infected person; I am sure it is in

the air; we draw in death when we breathe, and therefore it is the hand

of God: there is no withstanding it." And this at last made many people,

being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at it, and less

cautious towards the latter end of the time, and when it was come to its

height, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkish

predestinarianism,[263] they would say, if it pleased God to strike

them, it was all one whether they went abroad, or staid at home: they

could not escape it. And therefore they went boldly about, even into

infected houses and infected company, visited sick people, and, in

short, lay in the beds with their wives or relations when they were

infected. And what was the consequence but the same that is the

consequence in Turkey, and in those countries where they do those

things, namely, that they were infected too, and died by hundreds and

thousands?

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the

reverence to his providence, which ought always to be on our minds on

such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke

from Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation, where it falls; a

messenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country,

or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophet

Jeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): "At what instant I shall speak concerning a

nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to

destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from

their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."

Now, to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on

such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those

minutes upon record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those

things upon the immediate hand of God and the appointment and direction

of his providence; nay, on the contrary, there were many wonderful

deliverances of persons from infection, and deliverances of persons

when infected, which intimate singular and remarkable providence in the

particular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my own

deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it with

thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural

causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural

means. Nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under the

conduct of human causes and effects; for as the Divine Power has formed

the whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so the

same Power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercy

or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he

is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means,

excepting and reserving to himself, nevertheless, a power to act in a

supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident, that, in the

case of an infection, there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for

supernatural operation; but the ordinary course of things appears

sufficiently armed, and made capable of all the effects that Heaven

usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this of

the secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, is

more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of divine vengeance,

without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

The acute, penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the

infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution

could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to

believe--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me

of it, that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must be

allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the

sickness or infection, but who received it in the ordinary way of

infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of

somebody, that was infected before.

The manner of its first coming to London proves this also, viz., by

goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant;

the first breaking of it out in a house in Longacre where those goods

were carried and first opened; its spreading from that house to other

houses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, and

the infecting the parish officers who were employed about persons dead;

and the like. These are known authorities for this great foundation

point, that it went on and proceeded from person to person, and from

house to house, and no otherwise. In the first house that was infected,

there died four persons. A neighbor, hearing the mistress of the first

house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the distemper

to her family, and died, and all her household. A minister called to

pray with the first sick person in the second house was said to sicken

immediately, and die, with several more in his house. Then the

physicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of a

general contagion; but the physicians being sent to inspect the bodies,

they assured the people that it was neither more or less than the

plague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threatened an

universal infection; so many people having already conversed with the

sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received

infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation

afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly: for the

sick could infect none but those that came within reach of the sick

person; but that one man, who may have really received the infection,

and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a sound person, may give

the plague to a thousand people, and they to greater numbers in

proportion, and neither the person giving the infection, nor the persons

receiving it, know anything of it, and perhaps not feel the effects of

it for several days after. For example:--

Many persons, in the time of this visitation, never perceived that they

were infected till they found, to their unspeakable surprise, the tokens

come out upon them, after which they seldom lived six hours; for those

spots they called the tokens were really gangrene spots, or mortified

flesh, in small knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and hard as a

piece of callus[264] or horn; so that when the disease was come up to

that length, there was nothing could follow but certain death. And yet,

as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor found

themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks were upon

them. But everybody must allow that they were infected in a high degree

before, and must have been so some time; and consequently their breath,

their sweat, their very clothes, were contagious for many days before.

This occasioned a vast variety of cases, which physicians would have

much more opportunity to remember than I; but some came within the

compass of my observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few.

A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month of

September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the city than it

had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something too bold, as I think

it was, in his talk of how secure he was, how cautious he had been, and

how he had never come near any sick body. Says another citizen, a

neighbor of his, to him one day, "Do not be too confident, Mr. ----: it

is hard to say who is sick and who is well; for we see men alive and

well to outward appearance one hour, and dead the next."--"That is

true," says the first man (for he was not a man presumptuously secure,

but had escaped a long while; and men, as I have said above, especially

in the city, began to be overeasy on that score),--"that is true," says

he. "I do not think myself secure; but I hope I have not been in company

with any person that there has been any danger in."--"No!" says his

neighbor. "Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in Gracechurch Street,

with Mr. ----, the night before last?"--"Yes," says the first, "I was;

but there was nobody there that we had any reason to think dangerous."

Upon which his neighbor said no more, being unwilling to surprise him.

But this made him more inquisitive, and, as his neighbor appeared

backward, he was the more impatient; and in a kind of warmth says he

aloud, "Why, he is not dead, is he?" Upon which his neighbor still was

silent, but cast up his eyes, and said something to himself; at which

the first citizen turned pale, and said no more but this, "Then I am a

dead man too!" and went home immediately, and sent for a neighboring

apothecary to give him something preventive, for he had not yet found

himself ill. But the apothecary, opening his breast, fetched a sigh, and

said no more but this, "Look up to God." And the man died in a few

hours.

Now, let any man judge from a case like this if it is possible for the

regulations of magistrates, either by shutting up the sick or removing

them, to stop an infection which spreads itself from man to man even

while they are perfectly well, and insensible of its approach, and may

be so for many days.

It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men might have

the seeds of the contagion in them before it discovered[265] itself in

this fatal manner, and how long they might go about seemingly whole, and

yet be contagious to all those that came near them. I believe the most

experienced physicians cannot answer this question directly any more

than I can; and something an ordinary observer may take notice of which

may pass their observation. The opinion of physicians abroad seems to

be, that it may lie dormant in the spirits, or in the blood vessels, a

very considerable time: why else do they exact a quarantine of those who

come into their harbors and ports from suspected places? Forty days is,

one would think, too long for nature to struggle with such an enemy as

this, and not conquer it or yield to it; but I could not think by my own

observation that they can be infected, so as to be contagious to others,

above fifteen or sixteen days at farthest; and on that score it was,

that when a house was shut up in the city, and any one had died of the

plague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or

eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they[266] would

connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid

of them afterwards, but rather think they were fortified the better,

having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in their house: but we

sometimes found it had lain much longer concealed.

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say, that, though

Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, it is my

opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best

physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know people

encourage themselves by saying, "God is able to keep us in the midst of

danger, and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger;"

and this kept thousands in the town whose carcasses went into the great

pits by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I

believe, been safe from the disaster: at least, 'tis probable they had

been safe.

And were this very fundamental[267] only duly considered by the people

on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it

would put them upon quite different measures for managing the people

from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken

abroad that I have heard of: in a word, they would consider of

separating the people into smaller bodies, and removing them in time

farther from one another, and not let such a contagion as this, which is

indeed chiefly dangerous to collected bodies of people, find a million

of people in a body together, as was very near the case before, and

would certainly be the case if it should ever appear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where

it happens, can only[268] burn a few houses; or if it begins in a

single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house

where it begins; but if it begins in a close-built town or city, and

gets ahead, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and

consumes all it can reach.

I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government of

this city, if ever they should be under the apprehension of such another

enemy, (God forbid they should!) might ease themselves of the greatest

part of the dangerous people that belong to them: I mean such as the

begging, starving, laboring poor, and among them chiefly those who, in a

case of siege, are called the useless mouths; who, being then prudently,

and to their own advantage, disposed of, and the wealthy inhabitants

disposing of themselves, and of their servants and children, the city

and its adjacent parts would be so effectually evacuated that there

would not be above a tenth part of its people left together for the

disease to take hold upon. But suppose them to be a fifth part, and that

two hundred and fifty thousand people were left; and if it did seize

upon them, they would, by their living so much at large, be much better

prepared to defend themselves against the infection, and be less liable

to the effects of it, than if the same number of people lived close

together in one smaller city, such as Dublin, or Amsterdam, or the like.

It is true, hundreds, yea thousands, of families fled away at this last

plague; but then of them many fled too late, and not only died in their

flight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries where

they went, and infected those whom they went among for safety; which

confounded[269] the thing, and made that be a propagation of the

distemper which was the best means to prevent it. And this, too, is

evident of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but

must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently

well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals,

and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape

it; and that, all the while they did so, they were dangerous to others.

I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very

towns they went through, as well as the families they went among; and it

was by that means that almost all the great towns in England had the

distemper among them more or less, and always they would tell you such

a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it down.

It must not be omitted,[270] that when I speak of those people who were

really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their

own condition; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as

indeed they were, they must have been a kind of willful murderers if

they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have

verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which I

thought seemed untrue, viz., that the infected people were utterly

careless as to giving the infection to others, and rather forward to do

it than not; and I believe it was partly from this very thing that they

raised that suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact.

I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general; but I

could name several people, within the knowledge of some of their

neighbors and families yet living, who showed the contrary to an

extreme. One man, the master of a family in my neighborhood, having had

the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman whom he

employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some work

that he wanted to have finished; and he had some apprehensions even

while he was at the poor workman's door, but did not discover it[271]

fully; but the next day it discovered itself, and he was taken very ill,

upon which he immediately caused himself to be carried into an

outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over

a workhouse, the man being a brazier. Here he lay, and here he died, and

would be tended by none of his neighbors but by a nurse from abroad, and

would not suffer his wife, nor children, nor servants, to come up into

the room, lest they should be infected, but sent them his blessing and

prayers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance; and

all this for fear of giving them the distemper, and without which, he

knew, as they were kept up, they could not have it.

And here I must observe also that the plague, as I suppose all

distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing

constitutions. Some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it came to

violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back,

and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with swellings

and tumors in the neck or groin, or armpits, which, till they could be

broke, put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as

I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their

spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell into

swooning and faintings, and death without pain.