scape incarceration. In some
cases they bribed, and in others ill-treated the watchmen: one of whom
was actually blown up by gunpowder in Coleman Street, that those he
guarded might flee unmolested. Again, it chanced that strong men,
rendered desperate when brought face to face with loathsome death,
lowered themselves from windows of their houses in sight of the watch,
whom they threatened with instant death if they cried out or stirred.

The apprehension of the sick, who were in most cases deserted by their
friends, was increased tenfold by the practices of public nurses:
for being hardened to affliction by nature of their employment, and
incapable of remorse for crime by reason of their vileness, they were
guilty of many barbarous usages. "These wretches," says Dr. Hodges, "out
of greediness to plunder the dead, would strangle their patients, and
charge it to the distemper in their throats. Others would secretly
convey the pestilential taint from sores of the infected to those who
were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned miscreants from
prosecuting their avaricious purposes by all methods their wickedness
could invent; who, although they were without witnesses to accuse them,
yet it is not doubted but divine vengeance will overtake such wicked
barbarities with due punishment. Nay, some were remarkably struck from
heaven in the perpetration of their crimes; and one particularly amongst
many, as she was leaving the house of a family, all dead, loaded with
her robberies, fell down lifeless under her burden in the street. And
the case of a worthy citizen was very remarkable, who, being suspected
dying by his nurse, was beforehand stripped by her; but recovering
again, he came a second time into the world naked."

But notwithstanding all precautions and care taken by the Duke of
Albemarle and the worthy lord mayor, the dreadful pestilence spread with
alarming rapidity; as may be judged from the fact that the number who
died in the first week of June amounted to forty-three, whilst during
the last week of that month two hundred and sixty-seven persons were
carried to their graves. From the 4th of July to the 11th, seven hundred
and fifty-five deaths were chronicled; the following eight days the
death rate rose to one thousand and eighty-two; whilst the ensuing week
this high figure was increased by over eight hundred. For the month of
August, the mortality bill recorded seventeen thousand and thirty-six
death