want among the poorer classes, owing to the cessation of work,
especially along the riverside. The Lord Mayor, some of the Aldermen,
and most other rich citizens had hastened to leave the City. While
many of the clergy were deserting their flocks, and many doctors
their patients, others remained firmly at their posts, and worked
incessantly, and did all that was possible in order to check the
spread of the Plague and to relieve the distress of the poor.

Numbers of the women were engaged as nurses. Examiners were appointed
in each parish, and these, with their assistants, paid house-to-house
visitations, in order to discover any who were infected; and as soon
as the case was discovered the house was closed, and none suffered to
go in or out, a watchman being placed before the door day and night.
Two men therefore were needed to each infected house, and this
afforded employment for numbers of poor. Others were engaged in
digging graves, or in going round at night, with carts, collecting
the dead.

So great was the dread of the people at the thought of being shut up
in their houses, without communication with the world, that every
means was used for concealing the fact that one of the inmates was
smitten down. This was the more easy because the early stages of the
disease were without pain, and people were generally ignorant that
they had been attacked until within a few hours, and sometimes within
a few minutes, of their death; consequently, when the Plague had once
spread, all the precautions taken to prevent its increase were
useless, while they caused great misery and suffering, and doubtless
very much greater loss of life. For, owing to so many being shut up
in the houses with those affected, and there being no escape from the
infection, whole families, with the servants and apprentices, sickened