wants 395 in the number above, so
there wants two days of two months in the account of time.[155]

Now, when I say that the parish officers did not give in a full account,
or were not to be depended upon for their account, let any one but
consider how men could be exact in such a time of dreadful distress, and
when many of them were taken sick themselves, and perhaps died in the
very time when their accounts were to be given in (I mean the parish
clerks, besides inferior officers): for though these poor men ventured
at all hazards, yet they were far from being exempt from the common
calamity, especially if it be true that the parish of Stepney had within
the year one hundred and sixteen sextons, gravediggers, and their
assistants; that is to say, bearers, bellmen, and drivers of carts for
carrying off the dead bodies.

Indeed, the work was not of such a nature as to allow them leisure to
take an exact tale[156] of the dead bodies, which were all huddled
together in the dark into a pit; which pit, or trench, no man could come
nigh but at the utmost peril. I have observed often that in the parishes
of Aldgate, Cripplegate, Whitechapel, and Stepney, there were five, six,
seven, and eight hundred in a week in the bills; whereas, if we may
believe the opinion of those that lived in the city all the time, as
well as I, there died sometimes two thousand a week in those parishes.
And I saw it under the hand of one that made as strict an examination as
he could, that there really died a hundred thousand people of the plague
in it that one year; whereas, in the bills, the article of the plague
was but 68,590.

If I may be allowed to give my opinion, by what I saw with my eyes, and
heard from other people that were eyewitnesses, I do verily believe the
same; viz., that there died at least a hundred thousand of the plague
only, besides other distempers, and besides those which died in the
fields and highways and secret places, out of the compass[157] of the
communication, as it was called, and who were not put down in the bills,
though they really belonged to the body of the inhabitants. It was known
to us all that abundance of poor despairing creatures who had the
distemper upon them, and were grown stupid or melancholy by their misery
(as many were), wandered away into the fields and woods, and into secret
uncouth[158] places, almost anywhere, to creep into a bush or hedge, and
die.

The inhabitants of the villages adjacent w