duty, in many; and some that came to my knowledge; that is to say, by hear-say: 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 came upon them, could neither have help of one kind nor 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, halfborn 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.

Chrisoms 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

To the disparity of these numbers, it is to be considered and allowed for, that according to our usual opinion, who were then upon the spot, there were not one-third of the people in the town during the months of August and September, as were in the months of January and February. In a word, the usual number that used to die of these three articles, and, as I hear, did die of them the year before, was thus:

This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers of people are considered. I pretend not to make any exact calculation of the numbers of people which were at this time in the city; but I shall make a probable conjecture at that part by-and-by. What I have said now is to explain the misery of those poor creatures above, so that it might well be said, as in the Scripture"Woe be to those who are with child, and to those who give suck in that day." For, indeed, it was a woe to them in particular.

I was not conversant in many particular families where these things happened; but the outcries of the miserable were heard afar off. As to those who were with child, we have seen some calculation made; two hundred and ninety-one women dead in child-bed in nine weeks, out of one-third part of the number, of whom there usually died in that time but forty-eight of the same disaster.

Born

*The increase of Mortality under the head "Abortive and Stillin the year of the Plague, was by no means so great, comparatively, as in that of the deaths in "Child-bed," as will be seen by the following extracts from the Bills of Mortality, which include the returns for ten years, viz., from 1661 to 1670.-The numbers given by De Foe, under the year 1664, are not correct. The actual amount exceeded the total which he has given by 106.

There is no room to doubt but the misery of those that gave suck was in proportion as great. Our bills of mortality could give but little light in this; yet some it did. There were several more than usual starved at nurse; but this was nothing. The misery was, where they were, 1st, starved for want of a nurse, the mothers dying and all the family, and the infants found dead by them, merely for want; and, if I may speak my opinion, I do believe that many hundreds of poor helpless infants perished in this manner: 2ndly, not starved, but poisoned by the nurse. Nay, even where the mother has been nurse, and having received the infection, has poisoned, that is, infected the infant with her milk, even before she knew she was infected herself; nay, and the infant has died in such a case before the mother. I cannot but remember to leave this admonition upon record, if ever such another dreadful visitation should happen in this city; that all women that are with child, or that give suck, should be gone, if they have any possible means, out of the place; because their misery, if infected, will so much exceed all other people's.*

I could tell here dismal stories of living infants being found sucking the breasts of their mothers, or nurses, after they had been dead of the Plague. Of a mother, in the parish where I lived, who having a child that was not well, sent for an apothecary to view the child; and when he came, as the relation goes, was giving the child suck at her breast, and to all appearance, was herself very

*Notwithstanding the great mortality alleged to have taken place among females, it appears from the Bills of Mortality, that the difference between the male and female deaths during the year was only 168, namely:

well; but when the apothecary came close to her, he saw the tokens upon that breast with which she was suckling the child. He was surprised enough to be sure; but not willing to fright the poor woman too much, he desired she would give the child into his hand; so he takes the child, and going to a cradle in the room, lays it in, and opening its clothes, found the tokens upon the child too, and both died before he could get home to send a preventive medicine to the father of the child, to whom he told their condition: whether the child infected the nurse-mother, or the mother the child, was not certain, but the last most likely.

Likewise of a child brought home to the parents from. a nurse that had died of the Plague; yet the tender mother would not refuse to take in her child, and laid it in her bosom, by which she was infected, and died, with the child in her arms dead also.

It would make the hardest heart move at the instances that were frequently found of tender mothers tending and watching with their dear children, and even dying before them, and sometimes taking the distemper from them, and dying, when the child, for whom the affectionate heart had been sacrificed, has got over it and escaped.

The like of a tradesman in East Smithfield, whose wife was big with child of her first child, and fell in labour having the Plague upon her. He could neither get midwife to assist her, nor nurse to tend her; and two servants which he kept fled both from her. He ran from house to house like one distracted, but could get no help; the utmost he could get was, that a watchman, who attended at an infected house shut up, promised to send a nurse in the morning, The poor man, with his heart broken, went back; assisted his wife what he could, acted