body look very ill, and in a sick dress and stunk mightily; which the coachman also cried out upon. And presently they came up to some people that stood looking after it, and told our gallants that it was a maid of Mr. Wright's carried away sick of the plague, which put the young gentleman into fright had almost cost him his life, but is now well again."
In the months of August and September, the contagion changed its former slow and languid pace, and having as it were got master of all, made a most terrible slaughter, so that three, four, or five thousand died in a week, and once eight thousand. By the Lord Mayor's order, Sept. 6, fires were made through all the streets and open places of London and the liberties thereof; which were continued three whole nights and days, to purge and purify the air. The propriety of this practice was much doubted, and much debate among the faculty ensued thereon ; but before the controversy was ended, the fires were extinguished by some very smart hasty rain, as if the heavens mourned for so many funerals, as well as for the fatal mistake that had been committed, in employing so pernicious a remedy. The day after this experiment, Evelyn writes in his, Kalendarium:—
"Sept. 7.— Neere 10,000 now died weekly; however I went all along the citty and suburbs from Kent-streete to St. James's, a dismal passage and dangerous to see so many coffines exposed in the streetes; ye streetes thin of people, the shops shut up, and all in mourneful silence, as not know- ing whose turn might be next."
