For the month
of August, the mortality bill recorded seventeen thousand and
thirty-six deaths; and during September, twenty-six thousand two
hundred and thirty persons perished in the city.
The whole British nation was stricken with consternation at the
fate of the capital. "In some houses," says Dr. Hodges, speaking
from personal experience, "carcases lay waiting for burial, and
in others were persons in their last agonies. In one room might
be heard dying groans, in an other the ravings of delirium, and
not far off relations and friends bewailing both their loss and
the dismal prospect of their own sudden departure. Death was the
sure midwife to all children, and infants passed immediately from
the womb to the grave. Some of the infected run about staggering
like drunken men, and fall and expire in the streets; whilst
others lie half dead and comatose, but never to be waked but by
the last trumpet." The plague had indeed encompassed the walls
of the city, and poured in upon it without mercy. A heavy
stifling atmosphere, vapours by day and blotting out all traces
of stars and sky by night, hovered like a palpable shape of dire
vengeance above the doomed city. During many weeks "there was a
general calm and serenity, as if both wind and rain had been
expelled the kingdom, so that there was not so much as to move a
flame." The oppressive silence of brooding death, unbroken now
even by the passing bell, weighed stupor-like upon the wretched
survivors.
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