The disease continued to spread. It was thought that dogs and cats carried about infection. All those in the City were slaughtered. They even tried, for the same reason, to poison the rats and mice, but apparently failed. The necessity of going to market was a great source of danger; people were warned to lift their meat off the counter by iron hooks. Many families isolated themselves. The journal of one such household remains. The household, which lived in Wood Street, Cheapside, consisted of the master, a wholesale grocer, his wife, five children, two maid-servants, two apprentices, a porter, and a boy. He sent the boy to his friends in the country; he gave the elder apprentice the rest of his time; and he stationed his porter, Abraham, outside his door, there to sit night and day. Every window was closed, and nothing suffered to enter the house except at one upper window, which was opened to admit necessaries, but only with fumigation of gunpowder. At first the Plague, while it raged about Holborn, Fleet Street, and the Strand, came not within the City. This careful man, however, fully expected it, and when it did appear in July he locked himself up for good. Then they knew nothing except what the porter told them, and what they read in the Bills of Mortality. But all day long the knell never ceased to toll. Very soon all the houses in the street were infected and visited except their own. And when every day, and all day long, he heard nothing but bad news, growing daily worse, and when every night he heard the dismal bell and the rumbling of the dead cart, and the voice of the bellman crying, "Bring out your dead!" he began to give up all for lost. First, however, he made arrangements for the isolation of any one who should be seized. Three times a day they held a service of prayer; twice a week they observed a day of fasting; one would think that this maceration of the flesh was enough in itself to invite the Plague. Every morning the father rose early and went round to each chamber door asking how its inmates fared. When they replied "Well," he answered "Give God thanks." Outside, Abraham sat all day long, hearing from every passer-by the news of the day, which grew more and more terrifying, and passing it on to the upper window, where it was received with a fiery fumigation. One day Abraham came not. But his wife came. "Abraham," she said, "died of the Plague this morning, and as for me, I have it also, and I am going home to die. But first I will send another man to take my husband's place." So the poor faithful woman crept home and died, and that night with her husband was thrown into a great pit with no funeral service except the cursing and swearing of the rough fellows who drove the cart. The other man came, but in a day or two he also sickened and died. Then they had no porter and no way of communicating with the outer world. They remained prisoners, the whole family, with the two maids, for five long months.