months, I should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition
nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient housekeeper to
serve the rest of the time for me – which was, in short, but a very small
favour, it being very difficult to get any man to accept of such an
employment, that was fit to be entrusted with it.
It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I am
sensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered people,
who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and very
dangerous in their running about streets with the distemper upon them
– which, when they were delirious, they would have done in a most
frightful manner, and as indeed they began to do at first very much,
till they were thus restraided; nay, so very open they were that the
poor would go about and beg at people’s doors, and say they had the
plague upon them, and beg rags for their sores, or both, or anything
that delirious nature happened to think of.
A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen’s wife, was (if
the story be true) murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate
Street, or that way. He was going along the street, raving mad to be
sure, and singing; the people only said he was drunk, but he himself
said he had the plague upon him, which it seems was true; and
meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her. She was terribly
frighted, as he was only a rude fellow, and she ran from him, but the
street being very thin of people, there was nobody near enough to help
her. When she saw he would overtake her, she turned and gave him a
thrust so forcibly, he being but weak, and pushed him down
backward. But very unhappily, she being so near, he caught hold of
her and pulled her down also, and getting up first, mastered her and
kissed her; and which was worst of all, when he had done, told her he
had the plague, and why should not she have it as well as he? She was
frighted enough before, being also young with child; but when she
heard him say he had the plague, she screamed out and fell down into
a swoon, or in a fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her
in a very few days; and I never heard whether she had the plague or no.
Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a citizen’s
house where they knew him very well; the servant let him in, and
being told the master of the house was above, he ran up and came into
the room to them as the whole family was at supper. They began to
rise up, a little surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he bid
them sit still, he only came to take his leave of them. They asked him,
‘Why, Mr -, where are you going?’ ‘Going,’ says he; ‘I have got the
sickness, and shall die tomorrow night.’ ‘Tis easy to believe, though
not to describe, the consternation they were all in. The women and
the man’s daughters, which were but little girls, were frighted almost
to death and got up, one running out at one door and one at another,
some downstairs and some upstairs, and getting together as well as
they could, locked themselves into their chambers and screamed out
at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of their, wits.
The master, more composed than they, though both frighted and
provoked, was going to lay hands on him and throw him downstairs,
being in a passion; but then, considering a little the condition of the
man and the danger of touching him, horror seized his mind, and he
stood still like one astonished. The poor distempered man all this
while, being as well diseased in his brain as in his body, stood still
like one amazed. At length he turns round: ‘Ay!’ says he, with all the
seeming calmness imaginable, ‘is it so with you all? Are you all
disturbed at me? Why, then I’ll e’en go home and die there.’ And so he