one chamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the
clothes of the beds, from whence ’tis supposed they were rolled off by
thieves, stolen and carried quite away.
It is indeed to be observed that the women were in all this calamity
the most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures, and as there were vast
numbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick, they
committed a great many petty thieveries in the houses where they
were employed; and some of them were publicly whipped for it, when
perhaps they ought rather to have been hanged for examples, for
numbers of houses were robbed on these occasions, till at length the
parish officers were sent to recommend nurses to the sick, and always
took an account whom it was they sent, so as that they might call them
to account if the house had been abused where they were placed.
But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing-clothes, linen, and
what rings or money they could come at when the person died who
was under their care, but not to a general plunder of the houses; and I
could give you an account of one of these nurses, who, several years
after, being on her deathbed, confessed with the utmost horror the
robberies she had committed at the time of her being a nurse, and by
which she had enriched herself to a great degree. But as for murders,
I do not find that there was ever any proof of the facts in the manner
as it has been reported, except as above.
They did tell me, indeed, of a nurse in one place that laid a wet cloth
upon the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so put an end
to his life, who was just expiring before; and another that smothered a
young woman she was looking to when she was in a fainting fit, and
would have come to herself; some that killed them by giving them one
thing, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing at
all. But these stories had two marks of suspicion that always attended
them, which caused me always to slight them and to look on them as
mere stories that people continually frighted one another with. First,
that wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at
the farther end of the town, opposite or most remote from where you
were to hear it. If you heard it in Whitechappel, it had happened at St
Giles’s, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that end of the town. If you
heard of it at that end of the town, then it was done in Whitechappel, or
the Minories, or about Cripplegate parish. If you heard of it in the
city, why, then it happened in Southwark; and if you heard of it in
Southwark, then it was done in the city, and the like.
In the next place, of what part soever you heard the story, the
particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet
double clout on a dying man’s face, and that of smothering a young
gentlewoman; so that it was apparent, at least to my judgement, that
there was more of tale than of truth in those things.
However, I cannot say but it had some effect upon the people, and
particularly that, as I said before, they grew more cautious whom they
took into their houses, and whom they trusted their lives with, and had
them always recommended if they could; and where they could not
find such, for they were not very plenty, they applied to the parish
officers.
But here again the misery of that time lay upon the poor who, being
infected, had neither food or physic, neither physician or apothecary
to assist them, or nurse to attend them. Many of those died calling for
help, and even for sustenance, out at their windows in a most
miserable and deplorable manner; but it must be added that whenever
the cases of such persons or families were represented to my Lord
Mayor they always were relieved.
It is true, in some houses where the people were not very poor, yet