\paperw5085 \margr0\margl0\ATXph16380 \plain \fs20 \f1 \fs22 Daniel Defoe actually wrote his \i Journal of the Plague Year\i0 in 1722. Although it is a fictional reconstruction
, it is based on true accounts:\par
\par
\i I say they had to dig several pits in another ground, when the distemper began to spread in our parish, and especially when the dead-carts began to go about, which was not, in our parish, till the beginning o
f August. Into these pits they had put perhaps fifty or sixty bodies each; then they made larger holes wherein they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from 200 to 400 a week. ...But now, at th
e beginning of September, the plague raging in a dreadful manner...people that were infected and near their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in blankets or rugs, and throw themselves in...\par
