1645.--For a shroud for Hunter’s child, the blind beggar-man 0 1 6 1646.--Paid and given to a poor wretch, name forgot 0 1 0 Given to old Osborn, a troublesome fellow 0 1 3 Paid to Rotton, the lame glazier, to carry him towards Bath 0 3 0 1647.--To old Osborne and his blind wife 0 0 6 To the old mud-wall maker 0 0 6 In 1665 the plague fell heavily on St. Giles’s, already dirty and overcrowded. The pest had already broken out five times within the eighty years beginning in 1592; but no outbreak of this Oriental pest in London had carried off more than 36,000 persons. The disease in 1665, however, slew no fewer than 97,306 in ten months.[625] In St. Giles’s the plague of 1592 carried off 894 persons; in 1625 there died of the plague about 1333; but in 1665 there were swept off from this parish alone 3216. The plague of 1625 seemed to have alarmed London quite as much as its successor, for we find that in St. Giles’s no assessment could be made, as the richer people had all fled into the country. A pest-house was fitted up in Bloomsbury for the nine adjoining parishes, and this was afterwards taken by St. Giles’s for itself. The vestry appointed two examiners to inspect infected houses. Mr. Pratt, the churchwarden, who advanced money to succour the poor when the rich deserted them, was afterwards paid forty pounds for the sums he had generously disbursed at his own risk. In 1642 the entries in the parish books show that the disease had again become virulent and threatening. The bodies were collected in carts by torchlight, and thrown without burial service into large pits. Infected houses were padlocked up, and watchmen placed to admit doctors or persons bringing food to the searchers, who at night brought out the dead. The following entries (for 1642) in the parish books seem to me even more terrible than Defoe’s romance written fifty years after the events:-- Paid for the two padlocks and hasps for visited houses £0 2 6 Paid Mr. Hyde for candles for the bearers 0 10 0 " to the same for the night-cart and cover 7 9 0 " to Mr. Mann for links and candles for the night-bearers 0 10 0 The next year the plague still raged, and the same precautions seem to have been taken as afterwards in 1665, showing that the terrible details of that punishment of filth and neglect were not new to London citizens. The entries go on:-- To the bearers for carrying out of Crown Court a woman that died of the plague £0 1 6 Sent to a poor man shut up in Crown Yard of the plague 0 1 6 Then follow sums paid for padlocks and staples, graves and links:--