Fire and Plague
In 1665, Charles II was faced with a great health crisis: an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in London commonly referred to as the Great Plague. Believed to have been introduced by Dutch shipping vessels carrying cotton from Amsterdam, the plague was carried by rats and fleas and the death toll at one point reached up to 7000 per week. Charles, his family and court fled London in July 1665 to Oxford. Various attempts at containing the disease by London public health officials all fell in vain and the disease continued to spread rapidly.
On 2 September 1666, adding to London's woes was what later became famously known as the Great Fire of London. Although effectively ending the spreading of the Great Plague due to the burning of all plague-carrying rats and fleas, the fire, which started in the early hours of Sunday, 2nd. of September in Thomas Farynor's bakery, Pudding Lane, consumed about 13,200 houses (396 acres of houses were destroyed, comprising 400 streets) and 87 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral. Four of the city gates were destroyed in the flames and almost all the buildings and landmarks of the medieval city of London, vanished.
At the time, a comet was visible in the night sky. The supposition of the day claimed it was God's message, and that the above crises were as a result of God's anger. Blame was placed upon Charles and his Court, but later the people shifted their blame to the hated Roman Catholics. The situation was not helped by Charles's brother, James II's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1667
Extracts from "Old Saint Paul's A Tale of the Plague and the Fire" by William Harrison Ainsworth
MAY, 1665.
PROGRESS OF THE PESTILENCE.
Towards the middle of May, the bills of mortality began to swell greatly
in amount, and though but few were put down to the plague, and a large
number to the spotted fever (another frightful disorder raging at the
period), it is well known that the bulk had died of the former disease.
The rigorous measures adopted by the authorities (whether salutary or
not has been questioned), in shutting up houses and confining the sick
and sound within them for forty days, were found so intolerable, that
most persons were disposed to run any risk rather than be subjected to
such a grievance, and every artifice was resorted to for concealing a
case when it occurred. Hence, it seldom happened, unless by accident,
that a discovery was made.
Quack doctors were secretly consulted,instead of the regular practitioners; the searchers were bribed to silence; and large fees were given to the undertakers and buriers to lay the deaths to the account of some other disorder. All this, however, did not blind the eyes of the officers to the real state of things.
Redoubling their vigilance, they entered houses on mere suspicion;inflicted punishments where they found their orders disobeyed or neglected; sent the sound to prison,--the sick to the pest-house; and replaced the faithless searchers by others upon whom they could place reliance. Many cases were thus detected; but in spite of every precaution, the majority escaped; and the vent was no sooner stopped in one quarter than it broke out with additional violence in another.
By this time the alarm had become general. All whose business or
pursuits permitted it, prepared to leave London, which they regarded as
a devoted city, without delay. As many houses were, therefore, closed
from the absence of the inhabitants as from the presence of the plague,
and this added to the forlorn appearance of the streets, which in some
quarters were almost deserted. For a while, nothing was seen at the
great outlets of the city but carts, carriages, and other vehicles,
filled with goods and movables, on their way to the country; and, as may
be supposed, the departure of their friends did not tend to abate the
dejection of those whose affairs compelled them to remain behind.
One circumstance must not be passed unnoticed, namely, the continued
fineness and beauty of the weather. No rain had fallen for upwards of
three weeks. The sky was bright and cloudless; the atmosphere,
apparently, pure and innoxious; while the heat was as great as is
generally experienced in the middle of summer. But instead of producing
its usual enlivening effect on the spirits, the fine weather added to
the general gloom and apprehension, inasmuch as it led to the belief
(afterwards fully confirmed), that if the present warmth was so
pernicious, the more sultry seasons which were near at hand would
aggravate the fury of the pestilence.
Sometimes, indeed, when the deaths were less numerous, a hope began to be entertained that the distemper was abating, and confidence was for a moment restored; but these anticipations were speedily checked by the reappearance of the scourge,which seemed to baffle and deride all human skill and foresight.
SEPTEMBER, 1665.
As he proceeded along Holborn, the ravages of the scourge were yet more apparent. Every house, on either side of the way, had a red cross, with the fatal inscription above it, upon the door. Here and there, a
watchman might be seen, looking more like a phantom than a living thing.
Formerly, the dead were conveyed away at night, but now the carts went
about in the daytime. On reaching Saint Andrew's, Holborn, several
persons were seen wheeling hand-barrows filled with corpses, scarcely
covered with clothing, and revealing the blue and white stripes of the
pestilence, towards a cart which was standing near the church gates.
2nd September, 1666 - Diary of Samuel Pepys
"So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops
and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from
another. When we could endure no more upon the water; we to a little
ale-house on the Bankside, over against the 'Three Cranes, and there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire."
4th. September, 1666
"I up to the top of Barking steeple,and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afeard to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see it; and to Sir W.Pen's, and there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday, but the remains of Sunday's dinner."
The Earl of Clarendon wrote.
"Above two parts of three of that great city were burned to ashes, and those the most rich and wealthy parts of the city, where the greatest warehouses and the best shops stood. The Royal Exchange, with all the streets about it, Lombard Street, Cheapside, Paternoster-Row, St. Paul's church, and almost all the other churches in the city, with the Old Bailey, Ludgate, all Paul's churchyard even to the Thames, and the greatest part of Fleet Street, all which were places the best inhabited, were all burned down without one house remaining."
Great as the calamity was, yet from a sanitary point of view it did
immense good. Nothing short of fire could have effectually cleansed
the London of that day, and so put a stop to the periodical ravages of
the plague. By sweeping away miles of narrow streets crowded with
miserable buildings black with the encrusted filth of ages, the
conflagration in the end proved friendly to health and life.
