had they given him any disturbance, as he said, from the Monday
afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the house,
which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying
just at that time. It seems, the night before, the dead-cart, as it was
called, had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought
down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called,
put her into the cart, wrapt only in a green rug, and carried her away.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard
that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while;
but at last one looked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a
kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, 'What d'ye
want, that ye make such a knocking?' He answered, 'I am the
watchman! How do you do? What is the matter?' The person
answered, 'What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart.' This, it seems,
was about one o'clock. Soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the
dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered. He
continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times, 'Bring
out your dead'; but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart,
being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.
The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them
alone till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him,
came to relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars,
they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they
observed that the window or casement at which the person had looked
out who had answered before continued open, being up two pair of stairs.
Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder,
and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room,
where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner,
having no clothes on her but her shift. But though he called aloud,
and putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody
stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.
He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who
went up also; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either
the Lord Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go
in at the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of
the two men, ordered the house to be broke open, a constable and
other persons being appointed to be present, that nothing might be
plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in
the house but that young woman, who having been infected and past
recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself, and were every one
gone, having found some way to delude the watchman, and to get
open the door, or get out at some back-door, or over the tops of the
houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks
which he heard, it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the
family at the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this
being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the house,
his wife, several children, and servants, being all gone and fled,
whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor, indeed, did I
make much inquiry after it.
Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as
particularly when the watchman was sent of some errand; for it was
his business to go of any errand that the family sent him of; that is to
say, for necessaries, such as food and physic; to fetch physicians, if