about ten
o'clock at night
It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the poor , yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it , and went about their employment with a sort of brutal courage ; I must call it so , for it was founded neither on religion nor prudence ; scarce did they use any caution , but ran into any business which they could get employment in , though it was the most hazardous . Such was that of tending the sick , watching houses shut up , carrying infected persons to the pest-house , and , which was still worse , carrying the dead away to their graves . It was under this John Hayward 's care , and within his bounds , that the story of the piper , with which people have made themselves so merry , happened , and he assured me that it was true . It is said that it was a blind piper ; but , as John told me , the fellow was not blind , but an ignorant , weak , poor man , and usually walked his rounds about ten o'clock at night and went piping along from door to door , and the people usually took him in at public-houses where they knew him , and would give him drink and victuals , and sometimes farthings ; and he in return would pipe and sing and talk simply , which diverted the people ; and thus he lived . It was but a very bad time for this diversion while things were as I have told , yet the poor fellow went about as usual , but was almost starved ; and when anybody asked how he did he would answer , the dead cart had not taken him yet , but that they had promised to call for him next week . It happened one night that this poor fellow , whether somebody had given him too much drink or no -- John Hayward said he had not drink in his house , but that they had given him a little more victuals than ordinary at a public-house in Coleman Street -- and the poor fellow , having not usually had a bellyful for perhaps not a good while , was laid all along upon the top of a bulk or stall , and fast asleep , at a door in the street near London Wall , towards Cripplegate - , and that upon the same bulk or stall the people of some house , in the alley of which the house was a corner , hearing a bell which they always rang before the cart came , had laid a body really dead of the plague just by him , thinking , too , that this poor fellow had been a dead body , as the other was , and laid there by some of the neighbours . Accordingly , when John Hayward with his bell and the cart came along , finding two dead bodies lie upon the stall , they took them up with the instrument they used and threw them into the cart , and , all this while the piper slept soundly .