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Updated: June 19, 2025
The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer, and a priest; the latter chanting as he goes. It is the dead-cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a year.
Ormiston recoiled from touching it; and Sir Norman seeing what they were about to do, and knowing there was no help for it, made up his mind, like a sensible young man as he was, to conceal his feelings, and caught hold of the sheet himself. In this fashion the dead bride was carried down stairs, and laid upon a shutter on the top of a pile of bodies in the dead-cart.
The unfortunate man's wife and child were removed the following night in the dead-cart, and, driven half-mad by grief and terror, he broke open the door of his dwelling, and, plunging a sword in the watchman's breast, who opposed his flight, gained the street. A party of the watch happened to be passing at the time, and the fugitive was instantly secured.
"The charge of infanticide seems not to be applicable to Pekin or the surrounding country, and is said to be almost unknown there. A dead-cart passes through the streets at early morning to pick up the bodies of children dying from ordinary causes whose parents are too poor to bury them.
Leonard heard no more; but dashing through a narrow passage opposite the Conduit, passed Bartholomew-lane, and traversing Lothbury, soon reached Coleman-street and the old city gate, to which he had been directed. Here he learnt that the dead-cart had passed through it about five minutes before, and he hurried on towards Finsbury Fields.
"How many more times this blessed night am I to be asked about that young lady. First and foremost, there comes two young men, which this here is one of them, and they bring out the young lady and have her hauled away in the dead-cart; then comes along another and wants to know all the particulars, and by the time he gets properly away, somebody else comes and brings her back like a drowned rat.
At this moment Solomon Eagle, with his brazier on his head, suddenly turned the corner of the street, and stationing himself before the dead-cart, cried in a voice of thunder, "Woe to the libertine! woe to the homicide! for he shall perish in everlasting fire! Woe! woe!" Hence, it seldom happened, unless by accident, that a discovery was made.
This woman has been telling me of the horrors of the streets where you have been; and I figured you stricken suddenly with this foul malady, creeping into some deserted alley to expire uncared for, dying with your head upon a stone, lying there to be carried off by the dead-cart.
"Seats there were none, and their beds were but straw, intermixed with vermin. "For many days the dead-cart visited the prison every morning, into which eight or ten corpses were flung or piled up, like sticks of wood, and dumped into ditches in the outskirts of the city." Silas Talbot says: "A New York gentleman keeps a window shutter that was used as a checkerboard in the Sugar House.
He had not proceeded far when he encountered a small party of the watch, to whom he showed his certificate, and recounted the fate of the driver of the dead-cart. At Temple Bar he was again obliged to exhibit his passports; and while there detained, he observed three other horsemen riding towards them from the further end of Fleet-street.
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