themselves in that year, than are put down in the bill of all put
together: for many of the bodies were never found who yet were
known to be lost; and the like in other methods of self-destruction.
There was also one man in or about Whitecross Street burned himself
to death in his bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it
was by the treachery of the nurse that attended him; but that he had
the plague upon him was agreed by all.
It was a merciful disposition of Providence also, and which I have
many times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable
ones at least, happened in the city during that year, which, if it had
been otherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the people
must have let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great
crowds and throngs, unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not
concerned at the houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or
at the persons or the people they came among. But so it was, that
excepting that in Cripplegate parish, and two or three little eruptions
of fires, which were presently extinguished, there was no disaster of
that kind happened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house
in a place called Swan Alley, passing from Goswell Street, near the
end of Old Street, into St John Street, that a family was infected there
in so terrible a manner that every one of the house died. The last
person lay dead on the floor, and, as it is supposed, had lain herself all
along to die just before the fire; the fire, it seems, had fallen from its
place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the joists
they lay on, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had not taken hold
of the dead body (though she had little more than her shift on) and had
gone out of itself, not burning the rest of the house, though it was a
slight timber house. How true this might be I do not determine, but
the city being to suffer severely the next year by fire, this year it felt
very little of that calamity.
Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people
into, and how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were
alone, they did many desperate things, it was very strange there were
no more disasters of that kind.
It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever knew
how to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that so many
infected people appeared abroad in the streets at the same time that
the houses which were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of
them shut up and guarded as they were.
I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be this:
that in so great and populous a city as this is it was impossible to
discover every house that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shut
up all the houses that were infected; so that people had the liberty of
going about the streets, even where they Pleased, unless they were
known to belong to such-and-such infected houses.
It is true that, as several physicians told my Lord Mayor, the fury of
the contagion was such at some particular times, and people sickened
so fast and died so soon, that it was impossible, and indeed to no
purpose, to go about to inquire who was sick and who was well, or to
shut them up with such exactness as the thing required, almost every
house in a whole street being infected, and in many places every
person in some of the houses; and that which was still worse, by the
time that the houses were known to be infected, most of the persons
infected would be stone dead, and the rest run away for fear of being
shut up; so that it was to very small purpose to call them infected
houses and shut them up, the infection having ravaged and taken its