N.B.[179]--That it was observed that the numbers mentioned in Stepney Parish at that time were generally all on that side where Stepney Parish joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, where the parish of Stepney comes up to the very wall of Shoreditch churchyard. And the plague at this time was abated at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most violently in Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch Parishes, but there were not ten people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney Parish which takes in Limehouse, Ratcliff Highway, and which are now the parishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St. Katherine's-by-the-Tower, till after the whole month of August was expired; but they paid for it afterwards, as I shall observe by and by. This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the plague's going off without reaching them, that they took no care either to fly into the country or shut themselves up: nay, so far were they from stirring, that they rather received their friends and relations from the city into their houses; and several from other places really took sanctuary in that part of the town as a place of safety, and as a place which they thought God would pass over, and not visit as the rest was visited. And this was the reason, that, when it came upon them, they were more surprised, more unprovided, and more at a loss what to do, than they were in other places; for when it came among them really and with violence, as it did indeed in September and October, there was then no stirring out into the country. Nobody would suffer a stranger to come near them, no, nor near the towns where they dwelt; and, as I have been told, several that wandered into the country on the Surrey side were found starved to death in the woods and commons; that country being more open and more woody than any other part so near London, especially about Norwood and the parishes of Camberwell, Dulwich,[180] and Lusum, where it seems nobody durst[181] relieve the poor distressed people for fear of the infection. This notion having, as I said, prevailed with the people in that part of the town, was in part the occasion, as I said before, that they had recourse to ships for their retreat; and where they did this early and with prudence, furnishing themselves so with provisions so that they had no need to go on shore for supplies, or suffer boats to come on board to bring them,--I say, where they did so, they had certainly the safest retreat of any people whatsoever. But the distress was such, that people ran on board in their fright without bread to eat, and some into ships that had no men on board to remove them farther off, or to take the boat and go down the river to buy provisions, where it may be done safely; and these often suffered, and were infected on board as much as on shore.