one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is
the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house
to house in their very clothes.

Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because, as
they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and
from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or
infectious steams of bodies infected, even in their furs and hair? And
therefore it was, that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was
published by the lord mayor and by the magistrates, according to the
advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be
immediately killed; and an officer was appointed for the execution.

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a
prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked
of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being
without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house.
All possible endeavors were used also to destroy the mice and rats,
especially the latter, by laying rats-bane and other poisons for them;
and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed.

I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body of
the people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them; and
how it was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, as
well public as private, that all the confusions that followed were
brought upon us, and that such a prodigious number of people sunk in
that disaster which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Providence
concurring, have been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, they
may take a caution and warning from. But I shall come to this part
again.

I come back to my three men. Their story has a moral in every part of
it; and their whole conduct, and that of some whom they joined with, is
a pattern for all poor men to follow, or women either, if ever such a
time comes again: and if there was no other end in recording it, I think
this a very just one, whether my account be exactly according to fact or
no.

Two of them were said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but now a
biscuit baker; the other a lame sailor, but now a sailmaker; the third a
joiner. Says John the biscuit baker, one day, to Thomas, his brother,
the sailmaker, "Brother Tom, what will become of us? The plague grows
hot in the city, and increases