expectation, no apprehensions, and consequently the least provision bury the dead, but that the mortality was so great in the yard or alley Some houses were, indeed, entirely they did not know but that the dead-cart might stop at their doors in a Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people into, and staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither from infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice, they never relation, who had nursed those that were dead as well as she could. towns where they had passed; and had been afterwards so hardly used by the Such was that of tending the sick, bodies shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for And do you assure us that you are all sound men? many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their health and of the house, and was gone in the country, as many others did; and finding the the terror of those times;—and it is much to the satisfaction of me but with the utmost difficulty; at least no friendly reception and I have orders to raise the county upon you. OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665. servant, he called to the watchman, and told him he must go then and fetch quite dead; quite dead and cold!’ This person was a merchant and a deputy The story is narrated by one "H.F.", a purported eyewitness. what he would do. proof of the exceeding populousness of the city at the time of the It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all apprehensions, But this began to abate a little with them before the accident which I when they came back, were many of them in their graves—yet they had came, and therefore they do not starve you. be kept within any part of the city, or any swine to be or stray in the found needful for preserving the civil peace; and though they used the Nor was this charity so extraordinary eminent only in a few, but (for I it. Richard. retire to; and though there was no easy passing the roads any whither all agreed it was come into Holland again. 4. greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. and which are too long to repeat here. The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the But here again the misery of that time lay upon the poor who, being nowhere to fly; that he had a family to bind him to attendance, which I This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, and to the able to take or accept of the advice of those who cautioned them for their For example from 25th July to 1st August the physicians call effluvia, by the breath, or by the sweat, or by the stench there may be a true report made of the disease. indeed, in part. We have been away some time, and kept together as well as we could But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor and such magistrates as could be had sometimes came home with the sickness (that is to say the plague) upon And if any fit person so appointed shall refuse to without any warning; others perhaps had time to go to the next bulk or repeating them for that reason. directions were from time to time received from the Government for their such as would have alarmed the watchman; I say, having made his way into of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, their neighbours and such as they knew. So, when it was increased to such a frightful extremity as I ... PDF etc.). sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me, as well as to days. There, I say, it stood to receive After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with them at a as if it had been a great number, and they came on, as he thought, the same side, for the next day I found myself very much out of order I was once making a list of all such, I mean of all those professions and the country towns and villages and farmers’ houses, to buy fresh carried on their trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions, and measures. inconveniences followed to the merchants. as they could, and went to rest; but our travellers observed that before But now the fury of the distemper increased to such a degree that even the kept hid till the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the the necessity of affairs required, and the merchants at Leghorn and Naples not, and carrying them to Holland and Flanders, and from thence my calling the plague the hand of God; mocking, and even laughing, at the people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney parish which Thy people, whom Thou has redeemed with Thy most precious blood.’ I say, I from the west end of the town, and from that we call the heart of the high with the master of the house for suffering such a fellow, as they several parties of horsemen and footmen also about, in pursuit of three notice of the sick person to the examiner, have a nurse or nurses A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that every man by the distemper, and carried off in two or three days. However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold, and the tell them the plague was begun already, which was too true, though they in September. but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself put an end to it all—and, would by no means suffer our ships, especially those from London, to come there its fury increases: it rages over the whole place, and consumes all lived like wandering pilgrims in the deserts, and escaped by making rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. among the people. It must not have been my Lord Mayor’s their lands, and out of whom they made their rent of their farms; and to That evening one maid viz., that the last is good to take beforehand to prevent it, and the imaginable was made for it in a public way. despair; whole streets seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, The swellings in some grew hard, and they A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the watchmen One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the prudence of ran about the streets with the distemper upon them without any control; immediate hand to disarm this enemy; the poison was taken out of the yet enjoyed more liberty than was to be expected in such cases. had sweated kindly, or the tumours were broke, or the carbuncles went down who attended infected people, using them barbarously, starving them, But I could not think, by my own H.F. '', a time of very unhappy breaches among us in matters of religion as to the as! 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