Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down Threatening with deluge this devoted town.... Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filths of all hues and odours seem to tell What street they sailed from by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield or St. ’Pulchre’s shape their course, And in huge confluence joined at Snowhill ridge, Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge. Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood. Nor in estimating the sanitary condition of 18th Century London is the influence of the dead on the living to be forgotten. The twenty thousand who died annually remained to poison the survivors. The city grave-yards were places of decomposition rather than of interment, and an odour of corpses pervaded many neighbourhoods. Mr. Samuel Gale wrote in 1736-- In the church-yard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, the burials are so frequent that the place is not capacious enough to contain decently the crowds of dead, some of whom are not laid above a foot under the loose earth. The cemetery is surrounded every way with close buildings; and an acquaintance of mine, whose apartments look into the churchyard, hath averred to me that the family have often rose in the night-time and been forced to burn frankincense and other perfumes to dissipate and break the contagious vapour. This is an instance of the danger of infection proceeding from the corrupt effluvia of dead bodies.[77] Church-goers were subjected to cadaverous influences from the dead in the yard without and from the dead in the vaults below; and pious thoughts acquired an indescribable savour of the sepulchre. Many illnesses originated in church; and families who led wholesome lives at home were brought into deadly peril when they turned out on Sundays to public worship.