"
Business led me out sometimes to the
other End of the
Town, even when the
Sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was
new to me, as well as to
every Body else, it was a most surprising thing, to see those
Streets, which were usually so
thronged, now
grown desolate, and so few
People to be seen in them, that if I had been a Stranger, and
at a Loss for my Way, I might sometimes have gone the
Length of a whole
Street, I mean of the
by-Streets, and see no
Body to
direct me, except
Watchmen, set at the
Doors of such Houses as were shut up."
Daniel Defoe,
A Journal of the Plague Year, Penguin Classics, 2003 18.
