house was not shut up; but about two hours after they came home the young
lady complained she was not well; in a quarter of an hour more she vomited
and had a violent pain in her head. "Pray God," says her mother, in a
terrible fright, "my child has not the distemper!" The pain in her head
increasing, her mother ordered the bed to be warmed, and resolved to
put her to bed, and prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the
ordinary remedy to be taken when the first apprehensions of the distemper
began.

While the bed was being aired, the mother undressed the young woman, and,
on looking over her body with a candle, immediately discovered the fatal
tokens. Her mother, not being able to contain herself, threw down her
candle and screeched out in such a frightful manner that it was enough to
bring horror upon the stoutest heart in the world. Overcome by fright, she
first fainted, then recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs
and down the stairs, like one distracted. Thus she continued screeching and
crying out for several hours, void of all sense, or at least government of
her senses, and, as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again. As
to the young maiden, she was dead from that moment; for the gangrene which
occasions the spots had spread over her whole body, and she died in less
than two hours: but still the mother continued crying out, not knowing
anything more of her child, several hours after she was dead.

I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, though not
so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, except when they dug the
great pit in the church-yard of our parish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it
was, and I could not resist the curiosity to go and see it. So far as I
could judge, it was about forty feet in length and about fifteen or sixteen
feet broad, and, at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep;
but it was said they dug it nearly twenty feet deep afterward, when they