The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

Plague’s Progress• 115

job?), strapped down the body to a board, or if there were two bearers, they
might carry out a body on a sling and place it in a dead-cart. Eventually, the

sad cargo was deposited in the nearest churchyard or plague pit.
One by one neighborhood lanes emptied of traffic as the epidemic spread.
Residents stayed indoors as much as possible, sealed their windows, and kept
braziers or pots of fumigants burning to clean the air. The shrunken core of

courtiers and professionals in Westminster and the members of the city’s
merchant guilds knew they would be handed a gigantic bill for relief of the
sick and unemployed in the coming weeks. The king was no help. His mind
was on the war at sea, the contagion approaching the royal assemblage up the

Thames at Hampton Court, and, when possible, on distraction (having
brought along every diversion from court musicians to his favorite mistress).
Pepys had gone to the king’s temporary residence on navy business on the

tenth of July and was taken aback by the degree of panic, worse than in the
city: “It is, I perceive, an unpleasant thing to be at Court, everyone being
fearful of one another; and all so sad, inquiring after the plague—so that I
stole away with my horse.”^4

Changing Street Scenes

That none be suffered to sing or cry ballads in the streets, to sell by way of hawk-

ing any goods or commodities whatsoever.

—Proclamation of the Lord Mayor, July 4 , 1665

Silence enveloped the city. Gone were the hawkers of wares; they had been
forbidden to serve the public. The city’s criers—“Buy brumes, almanacke;
mackrill and mussels; aqua vitae! Buy any milk?”—were mute. Missing was
the familiar voice of the ratcatcher:

Rats or Mice! Ha’ ye any rats, mice, polecats or weasels?

Or ha’ ye any old sows sick of the measles?

I can kill them, and I can kill moles,

And I can kill vermin that creepeth up and down and peepeth in holes.^5

Rather than rats and mice, the Guildhall focused on killing their enemies—
cats and dogs. Neighborhood beadles and constables had gone through the
streets at the end of June telling householders to kill “all their dogs of what