is still, remarkable particularly, above all the parishes in London,
for a great number of alleys and thoroughfares, very long, into which
no carts could come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the
bodies a very long way; which alleys now remain to witness it, such
as White’s Alley, Cross Key Court, Swan Alley, Bell Alley, White
Horse Alley, and many more. Here they went with a kind of hand-
barrow and laid the dead bodies on it, and carried them out to the
carts; which work he performed and never had the distemper at all,
but lived about twenty years after it, and was sexton of the parish to
the time of his death. His wife at the same time was a nurse to
infected people, and tended many that died in the parish, being for her
honesty recommended by the parish officers; yet she never was
infected neither.
He never used any preservative against the infection, other than
holding garlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco. This I also
had from his own mouth. And his wife’s remedy was washing her head
in vinegar and sprinkling her head-clothes so with vinegar as to
keep them always moist, and if the smell of any of those she waited
on was more than ordinary offensive, she snuffed vinegar up her nose
and sprinkled vinegar upon her head-clothes, and held a handkerchief
wetted with vinegar to her mouth.
It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the
poor, yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it, and went
about their employment with a sort of brutal courage; I must call it so,
for it was founded neither on religion nor prudence; scarce did they
use any caution, but ran into any business which they could get
employment in, though it was the most hazardous. Such was that of
tending the sick, watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to
the pest-house, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to
their graves.
It was under this John Hayward’s care, and within his bounds, that
the story of the piper, with which people have made themselves so
merry, happened, and he assured me that it was true. It is said that it
was a blind piper; but, as John told me, the fellow was not blind, but
an ignorant, weak, poor man, and usually walked his rounds about ten
o’clock at night and went piping along from door to door, and the
people usually took him in at public-houses where they knew him, and
would give him drink and victuals, and sometimes farthings; and he in
return would pipe and sing and talk simply, which diverted the
people; and thus he lived. It was but a very bad time for this diversion
while things were as I have told, yet the poor fellow went about as
usual, but was almost starved; and when anybody asked how he did he
would answer, the dead cart had not taken him yet, but that they had
promised to call for him next week.
It happened one night that this poor fellow, whether somebody had
given him too much drink or no – John Hayward said he had not drink
in his house, but that they had given him a little more victuals than
ordinary at a public-house in Coleman Street – and the poor fellow,
having not usually had a bellyful for perhaps not a good while, was
laid all along upon the top of a bulk or stall, and fast asleep, at a door
in the street near London Wall, towards Cripplegate-, and that upon
the same bulk or stall the people of some house, in the alley of which
the house was a corner, hearing a bell which they always rang before
the cart came, had laid a body really dead of the plague just by him,
thinking, too, that this poor fellow had been a dead body, as the other
was, and laid there by some of the neighbours.
Accordingly, when John Hayward with his bell and the cart came
along, finding two dead bodies lie upon the stall, they took them up