But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the easternmost parts of the town; how for a long time the people of those parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how they were surprised when it came upon them as it did (for indeed it came upon them like an armed man when it did come),—­I say this brings me back to the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not knowing whither to go or what to do, and whom I mentioned before,—­one a biscuit baker, one a sailmaker, and the other a joiner, all of Wapping or thereabouts.

The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was such, that they not only did not shift for themselves as others did, but they boasted of being safe, and of safety being with them.  And many people fled out of the city, and out of the infected suburbs, to Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and such places, as to places of security.  And it is not at all unlikely that their doing this helped to bring the plague that way faster than it might otherwise have come:  for though I am much for people’s flying away, and emptying such a town as this upon the first appearance of a like visitation, and that all people who have any possible retreat should make use of it in time, and begone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left, and must stand it, should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in their very clothes.

Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because, as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious steams of bodies infected, even in their furs and hair?  And therefore it was, that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the lord mayor and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately killed; and an officer was appointed for the execution.

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed.  I think they talked of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house.  All possible endeavors were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying rats-bane and other poisons for them; and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed.

I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body of the people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them; and how it was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the confusions that followed were brought upon us, and that such a prodigious number of people sunk in that disaster which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Providence concurring, have been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, they may take a caution and warning from.  But I shall come to this part again.