fection did when it was in its
chief violence, though the houses infected were shut up as exactly and
effectually as it was possible. Certain it is, that, if all the infected
persons were effectually shut in, no sound person could have been
infected by them, because they could not have come near them.[237] But
the case was this (and I shall only touch it here); namely, that the
infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not
visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected, nor whom they
were infected by.

A house in Whitechapel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid,
who had only spots, not the tokens, come out upon her, and recovered;
yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or
exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger, vexation, and all the
other griefs attending such an injurious treatment, cast the mistress of
the family into a fever; and visitors came into the house and said it
was the plague, though the physicians declared it was not. However, the
family were obliged to begin their quarantine anew, on the report of the
visitor or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a few
days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and grief,
and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room, and for want of
breathing and free air, that most of the family fell sick, one of one
distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic[238] ailments, only one a
violent cholic; until, after several prolongings of their confinement,
some or other of those that came in with the visitors to inspect the
persons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper
with them, and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died,
not of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that
those people brought them, who should have been careful to have
protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently happened,
and was indeed one of the worst consequences of shutting houses up.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was at
first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about, though, as it
proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was, being
appointed, by the alderman of Portsoken Ward, one of the examiners of
the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had
no less than eighteen examiners, as the order called us: the people
called us visitors. I endeavor