manner. In some those swellings were made hard partly by the force
of the distemper and partly by their being too violently drawn, and
were so hard that no instrument could cut them, and then they burnt
them with caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment,
and some in the very operation. In these distresses, some, for want of
help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid hands
upon themselves as above. Some broke out into the streets, perhaps
naked, and would run directly down to the river if they were not
stopped by the watchman or other officers, and plunge themselves
into the water wherever they found it.
It often pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of those
who were thus tormented, but of the two this was counted the most
promising particular in the whole infection, for if these swellings
could be brought to a head, and to break and run, or, as the surgeons
call it, to digest, the patient generally recovered; whereas those who,
like the gentlewoman’s daughter, were struck with death at the
beginning, and had the tokens come out upon them, often went about
indifferent easy till a little before they died, and some till the moment
they dropped down, as in apoplexies and epilepsies is often the case.
Such would be taken suddenly very sick, and would run to a bench or
bulk, or any convenient place that offered itself, or to their own
houses if possible, as I mentioned before, and there sit down, grow
faint, and die. This kind of dying was much the same as it was with
those who die of common mortifications, who die swooning, and, as it
were, go away in a dream. Such as died thus had very little notice of
their being infected at all till the gangrene was spread through their
whole body; nor could physicians themselves know certainly how it
was with them till they opened their breasts or other parts of their
body and saw the tokens.
We had at this time a great many frightful stories told us of nurses
and watchmen who looked after the dying people; that is to say, hired
nurses who attended infected people, using them barbarously, starving
them, smothering them, or by other wicked means hastening their end,
that is to say, murdering of them; and watchmen, being set to guard
houses that were shut up when there has been but one person left, and
perhaps that one lying sick, that they have broke in and murdered that
body, and immediately thrown them out into the dead-cart! And so
they have gone scarce cold to the grave.
I cannot say but that some such murders were committed, and I
think two were sent to prison for it, but died before they could be
tried; and I have heard that three others, at several times, were
excused for murders of that kind; but I must say I believe nothing of
its being so common a crime as some have since been pleased to say,
nor did it seem to be so rational where the people were brought so low
as not to be able to help themselves, for such seldom recovered, and
there was no temptation to commit a murder, at least none equal to
the fact, where they were sure persons would die in so short a time,
and could not live.
That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices
committed even in this dreadful time I do not deny. The power of
avarice was so strong in some that they would run any hazard to steal
and to plunder; and particularly in houses where all the families or
inhabitants have been dead and carried out, they would break in at all
hazards, and without regard to the danger of infection, take even the
clothes off the dead bodies and the bed-clothes from others where
they lay dead.
This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, where
a man and his daughter, the rest of the family being, as I suppose,
carried away before by the dead-cart, were found stark naked, one in