I having stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day nor night but tolling bells; till I could walk Lombard Street and not meet twenty persons from one end to the other, and not fifty upon the Exchange; till whole families (ten and twelve together) have been swept away; till my very physician, Dr. Burnet, who undertook to secure me against any infection . . . died himself of the plague; till the nights (though much lengthened) are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people being thereby constrained to borrow daylight for that service. Lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer’s house shut up, and my baker and his whole family dead of the plague. Yet (Madam), through God’s blessing and the good humors begot in my attendance upon our late Amours, your poor servant is in a perfect state of health . . .
—Letter from Samuel Pepys to Lady Carteret, the 4th of September, 1665