The houses in the same row with that house northward are built on the very same ground where the poor people were buried,and the bodies,on opening the ground for the foundations,were dug up,some of them remaining so plain to be seen that the women's skulls were distinguished by their long hair,and of others the flesh was not quite perished;so that the people began to exclaim loudly against it,and some suggested that it might endanger a return of the contagion;after which the bones and bodies,as fast as they came at them,were carried to another part of the same ground and thrown all together into a deep pit,dug on purpose,which now is to be known in that it is not built on,but is a passage to another house at the upper end of Rose Alley,just against the door of a meeting-house which has been built there many years since;and the ground is palisadoed off from the rest of the passage,in a little square;there lie the bones and remains of near two thousand bodies,carried by the dead carts to their grave in that one year.
(4)Besides this,there was a piece of ground in Moorfields;by the going into the street which is now called Old Bethlem,which was enlarged much,though not wholly taken in on the same occasion.
[N.B.-The author of this journal lies buried in that very ground,being at his own desire,his sister having been buried there a few years before.]
(5)Stepney parish,extending itself from the east part of London to the north,even to the very edge of Shoreditch Churchyard,had a piece of ground taken in to bury their dead close to the said churchyard,and which for that very reason was left open,and is since,I suppose,taken into the same churchyard.And they had also two other burying-places in Spittlefields,one where since a chapel or tabernacle has been built for ease to this great parish,and another in Petticoat Lane.
There were no less than five other grounds made use of for the parish of Stepney at that time:one where now stands the parish church of St Paul,Shadwell,and the other where now stands the parish church of St John's at Wapping,both which had not the names of parishes at that time,but were belonging to Stepney parish.
I could name many more,but these coming within my particular knowledge,the circumstance,I thought,made it of use to record them.From the whole,it may be observed that they were obliged in this time of distress to take in new burying-grounds in most of the out-parishes for laying the prodigious numbers of people which died in so short a space of time;but why care was not taken to keep those places separate from ordinary uses,that so the bodies might rest undisturbed,that I cannot answer for,and must confess I think it was wrong.Who were to blame I know not.
I should have mentioned that the Quakers had at that time also a burying-ground set apart to their use,and which they still make use of;and they had also a particular dead-cart to fetch their dead from their houses;and the famous Solomon Eagle,who,as I mentioned before,had predicted the plague as a judgement,and ran naked through the streets,telling the people that it was come upon them to punish them for their sins,had his own wife died the very next day of the plague,and was carried,one of the first in the Quakers'dead-cart,to their new burying-ground.
I might have thronged this account with many more remarkable things which occurred in the time of the infection,and particularly what passed between the Lord Mayor and the Court,which was then at Oxford,and what directions were from time to time received from the Government for their conduct on this critical occasion.But really the Court concerned themselves so little,and that little they did was of so small import,that I do not see it of much moment to mention any part of it here:except that of appointing a monthly fast in the city and the sending the royal charity to the relief of the poor,both which Ihave mentioned before.
Great was the reproach thrown on those physicians who left their patients during the sickness,and now they came to town again nobody cared to employ them.They were called deserters,and frequently bills were set up upon their doors and written,'Here is a doctor to be let',so that several of those physicians were fain for a while to sit still and look about them,or at least remove their dwellings,and set up in new places and among new acquaintance.The like was the case with the clergy,whom the people were indeed very abusive to,writing verses and scandalous reflections upon them,setting upon the church-door,'Here is a pulpit to be let',or sometimes,'to be sold',which was worse.
It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection,when it ceased,there did not cease the spirit of strife and contention,slander and reproach,which was really the great troubler of the nation's peace before.It was said to be the remains of the old animosities,which had so lately involved us all in blood and disorder.But as the late Act of Indemnity had laid asleep the quarrel itself,so the Government had recommended family and personal peace upon all occasions to the whole nation.
