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 neighbours. 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 stayed in the town, if they had been made liable to such a severity.

Secing, then, that we could come at the certainty of things by no method but that of inquiry of the neighbours 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 is 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

The great

red cross.

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 neighbour, 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 neighbourhood, they appeared generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied for one another, or got some of the neighbourhood 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 lanc, 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 his 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.

houses.

In the execution of this office, I could not refrain speaking People shut my opinion among my neighbours, as to this shutting up the up in their 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 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 awhile, 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 demi-quarantine 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 awhile 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 endeavours 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 aud 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 it 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 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.

oppose cach clamour

other and

and com

plain to the

Lord

Mayor.

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful, the usual concourse of 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 Physicians injurious to the health of the people. This they made a loud clamour 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 cavilled 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 for neither 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