n, neither had they given him any
disturbance, as he said, from Monday afternoon, when he heard a 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 stopt 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, wrapped 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 you 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 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 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 broken open, a constable and other persons being
appointed to be presen