t in Cripplegate parish, and two or three little eruptions of fires,
which were presently extinguished, there was no disaster of that kind
happened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house in a place
called Swan Alley, passing from Goswell Street, near the end of Old
Street, into St John Street, that a family was infected there in so
terrible a manner that every one of the house died. The last person lay
dead on the floor, and, as it is supposed, had lain herself all along to
die just before the fire; the fire, it seems, had fallen from its place,
being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the joists they lay
on, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had not taken hold of the
dead body (though she had little more than her shift on) and had gone
out of itself, not burning the rest of the house, though it was a slight
timber house. How true this might be I do not determine, but the city
being to suffer severely the next year by fire, this year it felt very
little of that calamity.

Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people into, and
how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were alone, they did
many desperate things, it was very strange there were no more disasters
of that kind.

It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever knew how
to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that so many infected
people appeared abroad in the streets at the same time that the houses
which were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of them shut up
and guarded as they were.

I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be this:
that in so great and populous a city as this is it was impossible to
discover every house that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shut
up all the houses that were infected; so that people had the liberty of
going about the streets, even where they Pleased, unless they were known
to belong to such-and-such infected houses.

It is true that, as several physicians told my Lord Mayor, the fury of
the contagion was such at some particular times, and people sickened so
fast and died so soon, that it was impossible, and indeed to no purpose,
to go about to inquire who was sick and who was well, or to shut them up
with such exactness as the thing required, almost every house in a whole
street being infected, and in many places every person in some of the
houses; and that which was still worse, by the time that the hous