September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I believe, that
ever London saw; for, by all the accounts which I have seen of the
preceding visitations which have been in London, nothing has been
like it, the number in the weekly bill amounting to almost 40,000 from
the 22nd of August to the 26th of September, being but five weeks.
The particulars of the bills are as follows, viz. : –
From August the 22nd to the 29th 7496
” ” 29th ” 5th September 8252
” September the 5th ” 12th 7690
” ” 12th ” 19th 8297
” ” 19th ” 26th 6460
—–
38,195
This was a prodigious number of itself, but if I should add the
reasons which I have to believe that this account was deficient, and
how deficient it was, you would, with me, make no scruple to believe
that there died above ten thousand a week for all those weeks, one
week with another, and a proportion for several weeks both before
and after. The confusion among the people, especially within the city,
at that time, was inexpressible. The terror was so great at last that the
courage of the people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail
them; nay, several of them died, although they had the distemper
before and were recovered, and some of them dropped down when
they have been carrying the bodies even at the pit side, and just ready
to throw them in; and this confusion was greater in the city because
they had flattered themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the
bitterness of death was past. One cart, they told us, going up
Shoreditch was forsaken of the drivers, or being left to one man to
drive, he died in the street; and the horses going on overthrew the cart,
and left the bodies, some thrown out here, some there, in a dismal
manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit in Finsbury
Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone and abandoned it,
and the horses running too near it, the cart fell in and drew the horses
in also. It was suggested that the driver was thrown in with it and that
the cart fell upon him, by reason his whip was seen to be in the pit
among the bodies; but that, I suppose, could not be certain.
In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I have
heard, found standing at the churchyard gate full of dead bodies, but
neither bellman or driver or any one else with it; neither in these or
many other cases did they know what bodies they had in their cart, for
sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and out of
windows, and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart,
sometimes other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they
trouble themselves to keep any account of the numbers.
The vigilance of the magistrates was now put to the utmost trial –
and, it must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged on this
occasion also; whatever expense or trouble they were at, two things
were never neglected in the city or suburbs either : –
(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not
much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.
(2) No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked
from one end of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was to be
seen in the daytime, except a little, as I have said above, in the three
first weeks in September.
This last article perhaps will hardly be believed when some
accounts which others have published since that shall be seen,
wherein they say that the dead lay unburied, which I am assured was
utterly false; at least, if it had been anywhere so, it must have been in
houses where the living were gone from the dead (having found
means, as I have observed, to escape) and where no notice was given
to the officers. All which amounts to nothing at all in the case in
hand; for this I am positive in, having myself been employed a little in