"It would be endless," says the Rev. Thomas Vincent,
"to speak what we have seen and heard; of some, in their frenzy,
rising out of their beds and leaping about their rooms; others
crying and roaring at their windows; some coming forth almost
naked and running into the streets; strange things have others
spoken and done when the disease was upon them: but it was very
sad to hear of one, who being sick alone, and it is like frantic,
burnt himself in his bed. And amongst other sad spectacles
methought two were very affecting: one of a woman coming alone
and weeping by the door where I lived, with a little coffin under
her arm, carrying it to the new churchyard. I did judge that it
was the mother of the child, and that all the family besides was
dead, and she was forced to coffin up and bury with her own hands
this her last dead child. Another was of a man at the corner of
the Artillery Wall, that as I judge, through the dizziness of his
head with the disease, which seized upon him there, had dashed
his face against the wall; and when I came by he lay hanging with
his bloody face over the rails, and bleeding upon the ground;
within half an hour he died in that place."
And as the pestilence increased, it was found impossible to
provide coffins or even separate graves for those who perished.
And therefore, in order to bury the deceased, great carts passed
through the streets after sunset, attended by linkmen and
preceded by a bellman crying in weird and solemn tones, "Bring
out your dead.
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