It was, indeed, coming on amain; for the burials that same week were in the next adjoining parishes thus:

St. Len., Shoreditch 64 the next week 84 to the 1st 110 St. Bot., Bishopsgate 65 prodigiously 105 of August 116 St. Giles's, Crippleg. 213 increased, as 421 thus: 554

This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and un-Christian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought to my Lord Mayor, of houses causelessly (and some maliciously) shut up. I cannot say, but upon inquiry, many that complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person, and the sickness not appearing infectious, or if uncertain, yet, on his being content to be carried to the pest-house, were released.

It is true that the locking up the doors of people's houses, and setting a watchman there night and day to prevent their stirring out, or any coming to them, when, perhaps, the sound people of the family might have escaped if they had been removed from the sick, looked very hard and cruel; and many people perished in these miserable confinements, which it is reasonable to believe they would not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the people were very clamorous and uncasy at first, and several violences were committed, and injuries offered to the men who were set to watch the houses so shut up; also, several people broke out by force in many places, as I shall observe by-and-by; but it was a public good that justified the private mischief; and there was no obtaining the least mitigation by any application to magistrates or government, at that time at least, not that I heard of. This put the people upon all manner of stratagem, in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them, in which frequent scuffles and some mischief happened; of which, by itself.

As I went along Houndsditch one morning, about eight o'clock, there was a great noise; it is true, indeed, there was not much crowd, because people were not very free to gather together, or to stay long together when they were there, nor did I stay long there; but the outcry was loud enough to prompt my curiosity,

and I called to one who looked out of a window, and asked what was the matter.

A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up; he had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him. All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen; they called for nothing, sent him of no errands, which used to be the chief business of the watchmen; neither had they given him any disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time. It seems the night before, the dead cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a servant maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers, or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away.

The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out, and said, with an angry quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, "What do ye want, that ye make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman; how do you do? what is the matter?" The person answered, "What is that to you? Stop the dead cart." This, it seems, was about one o'clock. Soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered. He continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times-"Bring out your dead!" but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer and drove

away.

The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him, came to relieve him, giving him an account of the particulars; they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the window or casement at which the person had looked out who had answered before continued open, being up two pair of stairs.

Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a

ordered a

house to be broken open.

dismal manner, having no clothes on her but her shift; but though he called aloud, and, putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.

He came down again upon this and acquainted his fellow, who went up also, and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the Lord Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not Magistrate offer to go in at the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men, ordered the house to be broken open, a constable and other persons being appointed to be present that nothing might be plundered; and according it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who, having been infected and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself, and were every one gone, having found some way to delude the watchman and to get open the door, or get out at some back door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and shricks which he heard, it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at the bitter parting, which to be sure it was to them all, this being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the house, his wife, several children and servants, being all gone and fled; whether sick or sound, that I could never learn, nor indeed did I make much inquiry after it.

I could give a great many such stories as these, diverting enough, which in the long course of that dismal year I met with, that is, heard of, and which are very certain to be true, or very near the truth; that is to say, true in the general, for no man could at such a time learn all the particulars. There was, likewise, violence used with the watchmen, as was reported, in abundance of places; and I believe that from the beginning of the visitation to the end there was not less than eighteen or twenty of them killed, or so wounded as to be taken up for dead; which was supposed to be done by the people in the infected houses which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out, and were opposed.

Nor indeed could less be expected, for here were as many prisons in the town as there were houses shut up; and as the people shut up or imprisoned were guilty of no crime, only shut up because miserable, it was really the more intolerable to them.

It had also this difference, that every prison, as we call it, had but one gaoler, and as he had the whole house to guard, and that many houses were so situated as that they had several ways

out, some more, some less, and some into several streets, it was impossible for one man so to guard all the passages as to prevent the escape of people made desperate by the fright of their circumstances, by the resentment of their usage, or by the raging of the distemper itself; so that they would talk to the watchman on one side of the house while the family made their escape at another.

For example, in Coleman-street there are abundance of alleys, as appears still. A house was shut up in that they call White'salley, and this house had a back window, not a door, into a court, which had a passage into Bell-alley: a watchman was set by the constable at the door of this house, and there he stood, or his comrade, night and day, while the family went all away in the evening, out of that window into the court, and left the poor fellows warding and watching for near a fortnight.

blown up with gun

Not far from the same place they blew up a watchman with A constable gunpowder, and burnt the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he made hideous cries, and nobody would venture to come near to powder. help him, the whole family that were able to stir got out at the windows one story high, two that were left sick calling out for help; care was taken to give them nurses to look after them, but the persons fled were never found till, after the plague was abated, they returned; but as nothing could be proved, so nothing could be done to them.

It is to be considered too, that as these were prisons without bars or bolts, which our common prisons are furnished with, so the people let themselves down out of their windows, even in the face of the watchman, bringing swords or pistols in their hands, and threatening the poor wretch to shoot him if he stirred or called for help.

And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out spread the infection farther by their wandering about with the distemper upon them in their desperate circumstances than they would otherwise have done; for whoever considers all the particulars in such cases must acknowledge, and we cannot doubt but the severity of those confinements made many people desperate, and made them run out of their houses at all hazards, and with the plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither to go, or what to do, or indeed what they did; and many that did so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and perished in the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down by the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered into

the country, and went forward any way as their desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go; till, faint and tired, and not getting any relief, the houses and villages on the road refusing to admit them to lodge, whether infected or no, they have perished by the road-side, or gotten into barns and died there, none daring to come to them, or relieve them, though perhaps not infected, for nobody would believe them.

And this was, in part, the reason of the general notion, or scandal rather, which went about of the temper of people infected; namely, that they did not take the least care, or make any scruple of infecting others; though I cannot say but there might be some truth in it too, but not so general as was reported. What natural. reason could be given for so wicked a thing, at a time when they might conclude themselves just going to appear at the bar of Divine justice, I know not. I am very well satisfied that it cannot be reconciled to religion and principle, any more than it can be to generosity and humanity; but I may speak of that again.

I am speaking now of people made desperate by the apprehensions of their being shut up, and their breaking out by stratagem or force, either before or after they were shut up, whose misery was not lessened when they were out, but sadly increased: on the other hand, many that thus got away had retreats to go to, and other houses, where they locked themselves up, and kept hid till the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the approach of the distemper, laid up stores of provisions sufficient for their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so entirely, that they were neither seen nor heard of till the infection was quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well. I might recollect several such as these, and give you the particulars of their management; for, doubtless, it was the most effectual secure step that could be taken for such whose circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who had not retreats abroad proper for the case; for, in being thus shut up, they were as if they had been a hundred miles off: nor do I remember that any one of those families miscarried. Among these, several Dutch merchants were particularly remarkable, who kept their houses like little garrisons besieged, suffering none to go in or out, or come near them; particularly one in a court in Throgmorton-street, whose house looked into Draper'sgarden.

But I come back to the case of families infected, and shut up