it; neither in these or
many other cases did they know what bodies they had in their cart, for
sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and out of
windows, and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes
other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they trouble
themselves to keep any account of the numbers.

The vigilance of the magistrates was now put to the utmost trial--and,
it must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged on this occasion
also; whatever expense or trouble they were at, two things were never
neglected in the city or suburbs either:--

(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not
much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.

(2) No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked from one
end of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was to be seen in
the daytime, except a little, as I have said above, in the three first
weeks in September.

This last article perhaps will hardly be believed when some accounts
which others have published since that shall be seen, wherein they say
that the dead lay unburied, which I am assured was utterly false; at
least, if it had been anywhere so, it must have been in houses where the
living were gone from the dead (having found means, as I have observed,
to escape) and where no notice was given to the officers. All which
amounts to nothing at all in the case in hand; for this I am positive
in, having myself been employed a little in the direction of that part
in the parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was made
in proportion to the number of inhabitants as was anywhere; I say, I am
sure that there were no dead bodies remained unburied; that is to say,
none that the proper officers knew of; none for want of people to carry
them off, and buriers to put them into the ground and cover them; and
this is sufficient to the argument; for what might lie in houses and
holes, as in Moses and Aaron Alley, is nothing; for it is most certain
they were buried as soon as they were found. As to the first article
(namely, of provisions, the scarcity or dearness), though I have
mentioned it before and shall speak of it again, yet I must observe
here:--

(1) The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in the
beginning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the penny
wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half; and in the height of the
contagion it was to be