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 have now come, as I have said, to the month of September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I believe, that London ever 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 40,000 from the 22nd of August to the 26th of September, being but five weeks: the particulars of the bills are as follows, viz. :From August the 22nd to the 29th To the 5th of September

To the 12th

To the 19th

To the 26th

7,496

8,252

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 the hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of death was past; one cart, they told us, going up Shoreditch, was forsaken of 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 out 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

Vigilance of the city

magistrates

put to the

utmost trial.

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 nor driver, nor any one else, with it; neither in these nor in 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 magistrates 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.

First, Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.

Second,-No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked from one end of the city to another, no funeral, or sign of it, was to be seen in the day-time, except a little, as I have said above, in the three first 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 assured 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 time in the direction of that part in the parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was made in proportion to the number of 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,

First, 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.

Second, 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 maid-servants 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 pest-houses 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 pest-house but where money was given, or security for money, either at their introducing 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 to 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 were but 156 buried in all at the London pest-house, and 159 at that of Westminster.

By having more pest-houses, I am far from meaning a forcing all people into such places. Had the shutting up of houses been

N

omitted, and the sick hurried out of their dwellings to pesthouses, as some proposed, it seems at that time, as well as since, it 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 have 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, 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, waggons, 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.

But the magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged, made very good bye-laws 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, 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 the 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."

The Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and court of

aldermen,

resolve not

to quit the

city.

hold coun

cils daily.

In pursuance of these orders the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c., The Lord held councils every day more or less for making such dispositions Mayor, &c., 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.

and churchwardens

severe

Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay Constables 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 re-established 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

bound in penalties the city.

not to quit

Great devo

tion of the

Lord Mayor and sheriffs citizens.

towards the