place bolts on them, as they thought fit.

At another house, as I was informed, in the street near Aldgate, a whole
family was shut up and locked in because the maidservant was ill: the
master of the house had complained, by his friends, to the next alderman
and to the lord mayor, and had consented to have the maid carried to the
pesthouse, but was refused, so the door was marked with a red cross, a
padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set to keep the door
according to public order.

After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but that he, his
wife, and his children were to be locked up with this poor distempered
servant, he called to the watchman and told him he must go then and fetch a
nurse for them to attend this poor girl, for that it would be certain death
to them all to oblige them to nurse her; and that if he would not do this
the maid must perish, either of the distemper, or be starved for want of
food, for he was resolved none of his family should go near her, and she
lay in the garret, four-story high, where she could not cry out or call to
anybody for help.

The watchman went and fetched a nurse as he was appointed, and brought her
to them the same evening; during this interval the master of the house took
the opportunity of breaking a large hole through his shop into a stall
where formerly a cobbler had sat, before or under his shop window, but the
tenant, as may be supposed, at such a dismal time as that, was dead or
removed, and so he had the key in his own keeping. Having made his way
into this stall, which he could not have done if the man had been at the
door--the noise he was obliged to make being such as would have alarmed the
watchman--I say, having made his way into this stall, he sat still till the
watchman returned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But the night