Servant maids were often put in this melancholy plight.

They would be sent upon errands by their employers to the bake house or some other place; and perhaps ere they were admitted again they would be closely questioned as to what they had seen or heard.

Sometimes having terrible and doleful tales to tell of having seen persons fall down in the agonies of death almost at their feet, terror would seize hold upon the inmates of the house, who would refuse to open the door to one who might by this time be herself infected.

And when this was the case, the forlorn creature was forced to wander away, and generally tried to find her way out of the city and into the country beyond.

Many such unlucky wights, having no passes, were turned back by the guardians of the road; but some succeeded in evading these men, or else in persuading them, and many such unfortunates had found rest and help and shelter beneath Mary Harmer's charitable roof.
September was now come, but as yet there was no abatement of the pestilence raging in the city.