Saturday at
noon
As to the suddenness of people dying at this time , more than before , there were innumerable instances of it , and I could name several in my neighborhood . One family without the bars , and not far from me , were all seemingly well on the Monday , being ten in family . That evening one maid and one apprentice were taken ill , and died the next morning , when the other apprentice and two children were touched , whereof one died the same evening and the other two on Wednesday . In a word , by Saturday at noon the master , mistress , four children , and four servants were all gone , and the house left entirely empty , except an ancient woman , who came to take charge of the goods for the master of the family 's brother , who lived not far off , and who had not been sick . Many houses were then left desolate , all the people being carried away dead ; and especially in an alley farther on the same side beyond the bars , going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron . -LSB- 245 -RSB- There were several houses together , which they said had not one person left alive in them ; and some that died last in several of those houses were left a little too long before they were fetched out to be buried , the reason of which was not , as some have written very untruly , that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead , but that the mortality was so great in the yard or alley that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriers or sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried . It was said , how true I know not , that some of those bodies were so corrupted and so rotten , that it was with difficulty they were carried ; and , as the carts could not come any nearer than to the alley gate in the High Street , it was so much the more difficult to bring them along .