Spittlefields; also in St George’s Fields in Southwark, in Bunhill
Fields, and in a great field called Wood’s Close, near Islington.
Thither the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and magistrates sent their officers
and servants to buy for their families, themselves keeping within
doors as much as possible, and the like did many other people; and
after this method was taken the country people came with great
cheerfulness, and brought provisions of all sorts, and very seldom got
any harm, which, I suppose, added also to that report of their being
miraculously preserved.
As for my little family, having thus, as I have said, laid in a store of
bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and physician’s
advice, and locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to suffer
the hardship of living a few months without flesh-meat, rather than to
purchase it at the hazard of our lives.
But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my
unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I
generally came frighted and terrified home, vet I could not restrain;
only that indeed I did not do it so frequently as at first.
I had some little obligations, indeed, upon me to go to my brother’s
house, which was in Coleman Street parish and which he had left to
my care, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or
twice a week.
In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as
particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and
screechings of women, who, in their agonies, would throw open their
chamber windows and cry out in a dismal, surprising manner. It is
impossible to describe the variety of postures in which the passions of
the poor people would express themselves.
Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a
casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three
frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death, death!’ in a
most inimitable tone, and which struck me with horror and a chillness
in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street,
neither did any other window open. for people had no curiosity now in
any case, nor could anybody help one another, so I went on to pass
into Bell Alley.
Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more
terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window;
but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women
and children run screaming about the rooms like distracted, when a
garret-window opened and somebody from a window on the other
side the alley called and asked, ‘What is the matter?’ upon which, from
the first window, it was answered, ‘Oh Lord, my old master has
hanged himself!’ The other asked again, ‘Is he quite dead?’ and the
first answered, ‘Ay, ay, quite dead; quite dead and cold!’ This person
was a merchant and a deputy alderman, and very rich. I care not to
mention the name, though I knew his name too, but that would be an
hardship to the family, which is now flourishing again.
But this is but one; it is scarce credible what dreadful cases
happened in particular families every day. People in the rage of the
distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed
intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and
distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves,
throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves.,;,
&c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy, some
dying of mere grief as a passion, some of mere fright and surprise
without any infection at all, others frighted into idiotism and foolish
distractions, some into despair and lunacy, others into melancholy madness.
The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to some
intolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have tortured
many poor creatures even to death. The swellings in some grew hard,
and they applied violent drawing-plaisters or poultices to break them,
and if these did not do they cut and scarified them in a terrible