dig them larger, because of the
order of the magistrates confining them to leave no bodies within six
feet of the surface; and the water coming on at about seventeen or
eighteen feet, they could not well, I say, put more in one pit. But now,
at the beginning of September, the plague raging in a dreadful manner,
and the number of burials in our parish increasing to more than was ever
buried in any parish about London of no larger extent, they ordered this
dreadful gulf to be dug--for such it was, rather than a pit.

They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month or more
when they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for suffering such a
frightful thing, telling them they were making preparations to bury the
whole parish, and the like; but time made it appear the churchwardens
knew the condition of the parish better than they did: for, the pit
being finished the 4th of September, I think, they began to bury in it
the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into
it 1114 bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being
then come to lie within six feet of the surface. I doubt not but there
may be some ancient persons alive in the parish who can justify the fact
of this, and are able to show even in what place of the churchyard the
pit lay better than I can. The mark of it also was many years to be
seen in the churchyard on the surface, lying in length parallel with
the passage which goes by the west wall of the churchyard out of
Houndsditch, and turns east again into Whitechappel, coming out near the
Three Nuns' Inn.

It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or rather
drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near 400
people buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the day-time, as
I had done before, for then there would have been nothing to have been
seen but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in were
immediately covered with earth by those they called the buriers, which
at other times were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night
and see some of them thrown in.

There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits, and
that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that order was
more necessary, for people that were infected and near their end, and
delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in blankets or rugs, and
throw themselves in, and, as they said, bury themselves