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Hundreds were weekly being swept into their yawning tombs, and it seemed as if the city most surely must be devastated. Nurses could not be procured to care for the sick; and the dead-carts went gloomily through the silent streets, groaning beneath their fearful load of death, all the day long, while the grave-yards yawned constantly, as though their hunger never could be appeased. Several of Mr.
It was sad in the extreme to see the bodies placed in the streets at the close of day, to be ready for the dead-carts as they passed along. The dogs howled fearfully during the night. All was gloom and horror in every street; and you might see the vultures on the strand tugging at the bodies which were washed ashore by the eastern wind.
He lighted a lantern, and, followed by these two men, went towards the place pointed out by the gravedigger. A stoppage, occasioned by the dead-carts, made me lose sight of the old Jew, whom I was following amongst the tombs. Afterwards I was unable to find him." "It is indeed a strange affair. What could this old Jew want with the coffin?"
I think it was in June, towards the latter end of the month; it must be before the dead-carts came about, and while they used the ceremony of ringing the bell for the dead, which was over for certain, in that parish at least, before the month of July, for by the 25th of July there died 550 and upwards in a week, and then they could no more bury in form, rich or poor.
And what lent additional horror to the circumstances of these burials was, that those engaged in this duty would occasionally drop lifeless during their labour. So that it sometimes happened the dead-carts were found without driver, linkman, or bell-man. And it was estimated that the parish of Stepney alone lost one hundred and sixteen gravediggers and sextons within that year.
Not a street but had a house in it marked with a red cross some streets had many such. The bells were continually tolling for burials, and the dead-carts went their melancholy rounds at night and were constantly loaded.
The dead-carts filled with decaying bodies rattled through the foul streets, to drop their horrid burdens into the great pit at Aldgate; the bells of London tolled all day and all night for the passing of human souls. Hundreds of homes, isolated because of a victim of the plague found therein, became ghastly breeding-places of the disease, and then silent, disgusting graves.
As it grew brighter he grew calmer; and, when the unkindly sun burst burning upon the land, he knelt by his window and looked over the doomed town, and watched the dead-carts slinking away toward the everglades in the splendid color of the sky and air, and thought his own thoughts in his own way about this which he had come to do.
He lighted a lantern, and, followed by these two men, went towards the place pointed out by the gravedigger. A stoppage, occasioned by the dead-carts, made me lose sight of the old Jew, whom I was following amongst the tombs. Afterwards I was unable to find him." "It is indeed a strange affair. What could this old Jew want with the coffin?"
Few other vehicles besides those same dead-carts appeared in the city now; and they plied their trade busily, day and night; and the cry of the drivers echoed dismally through the deserted streets: "Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!"
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