The writing underneath the picture says: "This is the title page of one of Thomas Dekker's plague pamphlets, 1625. The plague was almost continually present in London until late in the seventeenth century, but in some years, the so-called plague years, the disease broke out into a violent epidemic; 1625 was one of these plague years. in his pamphlet, "A Rod for Runaways", Dekker describes the conditions in London during the epidemic. The illustration on the title page shows the wrath of God descending as lightening from the clounds, and in the corner death stands represented as a skeleton. On the left are men and women dead in the fields and over them is the inscription "Wee dye"; on the right is a group of people fleeing from the plague and in response to their words "Wee fly", death answers, "I follow". The people of the suburbian districts realized the truth of death's "I follow", and attempted to prevent the infected Londoners from contaminating their towns, as is shown by armed men marked with the inscription, "Keep out"".

The writing at the top describes the plague as "expressed in many dreadfull exaples of sudden death" affecting "both young and old, within this City and the suburbes, in the fields, and open streets, to the terror of those who live" and it tells those who are going to die "to be ready when God Almighty shall be pleased to call them".