I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations, have
grown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one, in particular,
who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirits
that by degrees his head sank into his body, so between his shoulders
that the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of his
shoulders; and by degrees losing both voice and sense, his face,
looking forward, lay against his collarbone and could not be kept up
any otherwise, unless held up by the hands of other people; and the
poor man never came to himself again, but languished near a year in
that condition, and died. Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his eyes
or to look upon any particular object.
I cannot undertake to give any other than a summary of such
passages as these, because it was not possible to come at the
particulars, where sometimes the whole families where such things
happened were carried off by the distemper. But there were
innumerable cases of this kind which presented to the eye and the ear,
even in passing along the streets, as I have hinted above. Nor is it
easy to give any story of this or that family which there was not divers
parallel stories to be met with of the same kind.
But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the
easternmost part of the town – how for a long time the people of those
parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how they
were surprised when it came upon them as it did; for, indeed, it came
upon them like an armed man when it did come; – I say, this brings me
back to the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not
knowing whither to go or what to do, and whom I mentioned before;
one a biscuit-baker, one a sailmaker, and the other a joiner, all of
Wapping, or there-abouts.
The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was
such that they not only did not shift for themselves as others did, but
they boasted of being safe, and of safety being with them; and many
people fled out of the city, and out of the infected suburbs, to
Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and such Places, as to Places
of security; and it is not at all unlikely that their doing this helped to
bring the plague that way faster than it might otherwise have come.
For though I am much for people flying away and emptying such a
town as this upon the first appearance of a like visitation, and that all
people who have any possible retreat should make use of it in time
and be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that
are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and
not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other;
for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the
plague from house to house in their very clothes.
Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because
as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house
and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or
infectious streams of bodies infected even in their furs and hair? And
therefore it was that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was
published by the Lord Mayor, and by the magistrates, according to the
advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be
immediately killed, and an officer was appointed for the execution.
It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a
prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they
talked of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses
being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a
house. All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice
and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for