In 1582 the plague again threatened. This time measures were taken to improve the sanitary conditions of the place. Regulations were introduced, which do not greatly differ from the precautions of modern legislation. It was, for instance, ordained that-- "No person shall cast or lay any donge, dust, ordure, rubbish, carreyne or any other thing noyant into any the waters ryvers or streams or any the streets, wayes or lanes. But every person shall swepe together & take up the said things noyant out of the channel of the street so far as their ground reacheth and cause the same to be carried away twice every week. All privies & hogsties set or made over upon or adjoining to any the waters or streames leading to any brew-house shall be removed & taken away. No person shall keep any hogs or swine within the said City but only within their own several backsides; no butcher shall keep any slaughter house or kill any oxen kyne shepe or calves within the walls. All pavements shall be made and amended in places defective and all chimneys occupied with fire shall from henceforth be swept four times every year." These ordinances, it will be seen, provided against the customary crying evils of a mediæval town. Similar provisions against similar evils are to be found in the archives of most cities in England or France in the sixteenth century. But ordinances are one thing and effective street-police is another. A hundred years later S. James's Square was still the receptacle for all offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster, whilst Voltaire's scathing description of the streets of Paris was no exaggeration. It was a state of affairs on which the Plague of London was the grimmest of all possible commentaries.