It is not, indeed, to be wondered at:  for the danger of immediate death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for one another.  I speak in general, for there were many instances of immovable affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch the truth of the particulars.

To introduce one, let me first mention that one of the most deplorable cases in all the present calamity was that of women with child, who, when they came to the hour of their sorrows, and their pains come upon them, could neither have help of one kind or another; neither midwife or neighbouring women to come near them.  Most of the midwives were dead, especially of such as served the poor; and many, if not all the midwives of note, were fled into the country; so that it was next to impossible for a poor woman that could not pay an immoderate price to get any midwife to come to her—­and if they did, those they could get were generally unskilful and ignorant creatures; and the consequence of this was that a most unusual and incredible number of women were reduced to the utmost distress.  Some were delivered and spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to lay them.  Children without number were, I might say, murdered by the same but a more justifiable ignorance:  pretending they would save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times both mother and child were lost in the same manner; and especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody would come near them and both sometimes perished.  Sometimes the mother has died of the plague, and the infant, it may be, half born, or born but not parted from the mother.  Some died in the very pains of their travail, and not delivered at all; and so many were the cases of this kind that it is hard to judge of them.

Something of it will appear in the unusual numbers which are put into the weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be able to give anything of a full account) under the articles of—­

     Child-bed. 
     Abortive and Still-born. 
     Christmas and Infants.

Take the weeks in which the plague was most violent, and compare them with the weeks before the distemper began, even in the same year.  For example:—­

Child-bed.  Abortive.  Still-born.  From January 3 to January 10 7 1 13 " " 10 " 17 8 6 11 " " 17 " 24 9 5 15 " " 24 " 31 3 2 9 " " 31 to February 7 3 3 8 " February 7 " 14 6 2 11 " " 14 " 21 5 2 13 " " 21 " 28 2 2 10 " " 28 to March 7 5 1 10 — —–­ —–­