be taken
for such whose circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who had
not retreats abroad proper for the case; for, in being thus shut up,
they were as if they had been a hundred miles off. Nor do I remember
that any one of those families miscarried.[103] Among these, several
Dutch merchants were particularly remarkable, who kept their houses like
little garrisons besieged, suffering none to go in or out, or come near
them; particularly one in a court in Throckmorton Street, whose house
looked into Drapers' Garden.

But I come back to the case of families infected, and shut up by the
magistrates. The misery of those families is not to be expressed; and it
was generally in such houses that we heard the most dismal shrieks and
outcries of the poor people, terrified, and even frightened to death,
by the sight of the condition of their dearest relations, and by the
terror of being imprisoned as they were.

I remember, and while I am writing this story I think I hear the very
sound of it: a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden about
nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very considerable
fortune. They were only lodgers in the house where they were. The young
woman, her mother, and the maid had been abroad on some occasion, I do
not remember what, for the house was not shut up; but about two hours
after they came home, the young lady complained she was not well; in a
quarter of an hour more she vomited, and had a violent pain in her head.
"Pray God," says her mother, in a terrible fright, "my child has not the
distemper!" The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered the bed
to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and prepared to give her
things to sweat, which was the ordinary remedy to be taken when the
first apprehensions of the distemper began.

While the bed was airing, the mother undressed the young woman, and just
as she was laid down in the bed, she, looking upon her body with a
candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on the inside of her
thighs. Her mother, not being able to contain herself, threw down her
candle, and screeched out in such a frightful manner, that it was enough
to place horror upon the stoutest heart in the world. Nor was it one
scream, or one cry, but, the fright having seized her spirits, she
fainted first, then recovered, then ran all over the house (up the
stairs and down the stairs) like one distracted, and indeed really was
distracted, and