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 or prudence . Scarce did they use any caution , but ran into any business which they could get any employment in , though it was the most hazardous ; such was that of tending the sick , watching houses shut up , carrying infected persons to the pesthouse , 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 went 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 -LRB- 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 -RRB- , and the poor fellow having not usually had a bellyful , or 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 -LRB- which they always rung before the cart came -RRB- , 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 neighbors .