Historic UK
It was the rat, attracted by impoverished, rubbish-filled city streets, that brought in the black rat-flea. It was the flea that carried bacteria and caused the plague. The Bubonic Plague created buboes i.e swellings in the lymph nodes found in the armpits, groin & neck, and victims experienced splitting headaches, vomiting, swollen tongue and fever, turning the victim’s skin black.
Incubation took only 4-6 days and when the plague appeared in a household, the house was sealed, thus condemning the whole family to death! These houses were distinguished by a red cross and the words ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on the door.
The plague started in the Far East and quickly spread through Europe. In London it began in the poor, overcrowded parish of St Giles-in-the-Field outside the city walls. In May 1665, only 43 people died. But the death rate began to rise during the hot summer months and at its peak in August, 31,160 people died. While 68,600 deaths were formally recorded in the city in 1665, the true number was probably 100,000, c15% of London’s population.
Sometimes whole communities died and corpses littered the streets, since there was no one left to bury them. In other places the corpses were brought out at night in answer to the cry,’ Bring out your dead’, put in a cart and taken away to the great gaping plague pits dug into the earth.
It was the rat, attracted by impoverished, rubbish-filled city streets, that brought in the black rat-flea. It was the flea that carried bacteria and caused the plague. The Bubonic Plague created buboes i.e swellings in the lymph nodes found in the armpits, groin & neck, and victims experienced splitting headaches, vomiting, swollen tongue and fever, turning the victim’s skin black.
Incubation took only 4-6 days and when the plague appeared in a household, the house was sealed, thus condemning the whole family to death! These houses were distinguished by a red cross and the words ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on the door.
The plague started in the Far East and quickly spread through Europe. In London it began in the poor, overcrowded parish of St Giles-in-the-Field outside the city walls. In May 1665, only 43 people died. But the death rate began to rise during the hot summer months and at its peak in August, 31,160 people died. While 68,600 deaths were formally recorded in the city in 1665, the true number was probably 100,000, c15% of London’s population.
Sometimes whole communities died and corpses littered the streets, since there was no one left to bury them. In other places the corpses were brought out at night in answer to the cry,’ Bring out your dead’, put in a cart and taken away to the great gaping plague pits dug into the earth.
King Charles II and his Court fled for Hampton Court in Surrey, then to Oxford. People who could afford to send their families away from London in these months did so - most doctors, lawyers & merchants fled the city. So Parliament was postponed and had to sit in October at Oxford. Court cases were also moved from Westminster to Oxford.
The Lord Mayor of London and the aldermen remained in London to enforce the King’s orders to try and stop the spread of the plague. The poorest families had no choice but to remain in London with the rats and the plague victims. Watchmen locked and kept guard over infected houses. Parish officials provided food. Searchers looked for dead bodies and took them, always at night.
Consider the measures taken by King Charles II in response to the plague. All trade with London and other plague towns was stopped. The Council of Scotland declared that the border with England would be closed. There were to be no fairs or trade with other countries. This meant many people lost their jobs, including those who worked on the River Thames. Orders to the mayors ensured that no stranger was allowed to enter a town unless he had a formal Certificate of Health. No furniture was to be removed from an infected house. There were to be no public gatherings like funerals.
Two men discovering a dead woman in the street in London, 1665.
Photo credit: Wellcome Trust
Read Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722. And Samuel Pepys’ Diary gave a vivid account of London’s empty streets. The Lost City of London – Before the Great Fire of 1666 is an excellent blog.
The Lord Mayor of London and the aldermen remained in London to enforce the King’s orders to try and stop the spread of the plague. The poorest families had no choice but to remain in London with the rats and the plague victims. Watchmen locked and kept guard over infected houses. Parish officials provided food. Searchers looked for dead bodies and took them, always at night.
Consider the measures taken by King Charles II in response to the plague. All trade with London and other plague towns was stopped. The Council of Scotland declared that the border with England would be closed. There were to be no fairs or trade with other countries. This meant many people lost their jobs, including those who worked on the River Thames. Orders to the mayors ensured that no stranger was allowed to enter a town unless he had a formal Certificate of Health. No furniture was to be removed from an infected house. There were to be no public gatherings like funerals.
A couple suffering the buboes of bubonic plague
C15th Toggenburg Bible
The plague spread across England. York was one city badly affected. The plague victims were buried outside the city walls and it is said that they have never been disturbed since then, as a precaution against a resurgence of the dreaded plague. The grassy embankments below the city walls are the sites of these plague pits.
The plague spread across England. York was one city badly affected. The plague victims were buried outside the city walls and it is said that they have never been disturbed since then, as a precaution against a resurgence of the dreaded plague. The grassy embankments below the city walls are the sites of these plague pits.
Memorials were placed everywhere. In some towns and villages in England there are still the old market crosses which have a depression at the foot of the stone cross for vinegar. In Derbyshire the small village of Eyam, 6 ms north of Bakewell, has a story of tragedy and courage that will always be remembered. The Plague Window in Eyam Church still recalls the era.
So how did the plague ever end? Did the black rat develop a greater resistance to disease? If the rats did not die, their fleas would not have needed to find a human host and fewer people would have been infected. And the humans who had not died also started to develop a stronger immunity to the disease. After 1666, more effective quarantine methods were used for ships coming into the country.
King Charles II returned to London in Feb 1666, then the gentry returned. Tradesmen opened their businesses again, and life might have returned to normal. Then in Sept 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of central London. Fortunately the fire also helped to kill off the black rats and fleas that had carried the plague bacillus. When the City was rebuilt after the Fire in brick and stone (not wood), the streets were widened and the open sewers were eradicated. This was the last major plague that London ever saw!
King Charles II returned to London in Feb 1666, then the gentry returned. Tradesmen opened their businesses again, and life might have returned to normal. Then in Sept 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of central London. Fortunately the fire also helped to kill off the black rats and fleas that had carried the plague bacillus. When the City was rebuilt after the Fire in brick and stone (not wood), the streets were widened and the open sewers were eradicated. This was the last major plague that London ever saw!
Photo credit: Wellcome Trust
Read Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722. And Samuel Pepys’ Diary gave a vivid account of London’s empty streets. The Lost City of London – Before the Great Fire of 1666 is an excellent blog.
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20 comments:
I'm glad the village of Eyam is immortalised in stained glass. The villagers were brave.
Dear Helen, thank you for all these informations! Awful times - and awful hygienic conditions.
Though the feeling of being helpless is known to us now too - the news from Bergamo in the time of Corona - the lonely streets (The Rolling Stones wrote "Ghost Town) - impressions not that far away.
And shutting the doors of poor infected families: I read about plans (and it is said these are not fake news) that in case of a nuclear accident there are governmental plans that you can't leave your contaminated city neither.
Of course time changes, we have more progress in science, in our countries there is still wealth and comfort - but when I look around at the moment I have the impression that the "varnish of culture" is only extremely thin.
To overcome such pessimistic thoughts I concentrate on all the wonders that also happen - and my answer is thankfulness, for me the best way not to lose my joy of living.
Look around: here in Bavaria spring is starting, beauty all around us.
The Great Plague of London revealed how poverty, overcrowding, and rudimentary public health measures enabled disease to devastate society, yet also prompted reforms that, alongside the Great Fire of London, ultimately helped end recurring plague in the city.
The incubation period for Covid is 3-5 days, unfortunately very similar to the Bubonic Plague.
The plague must have been horrible to live through or even worse, to be one of the dead. It's really interesting epidemiologically though. And those with the genetics to survive it, helped protect the future during the next rounds of the plague. Thanks for this post. It was really interesting.
Long before I knew about the plague and its details, I knew the chant, ''Bring out your dead". It used to scare my younger siblings.
jabblog
The stained glass is amazingly skilled. But I wouldn't even have known of the tiny town, if Eyam hadn't become known as the Plague Village. 260 Eyam villagers died in the plague year, out of the tiny total population of 800. So every family was devastated in some way :(
Historic UK reported: Doctors began to use other practices to limit the risk of contamination eg using pots of vinegar to swap coins cleanly. Plus the quick disposal of bodies, instead of leaving them in the street, limited the spread. And big city people, where the disease was rampant, were not longer allowed into the town.
Britta
when the church believed that disease was a punishment for bad behaviour, there was no way that ordinary doctors and families would have looked for scientific responses to the Bubonic Plague. But locking the front door on infected families was even more obscene when the parents died and the small children were "imprisoned".
Thank good epidemics still come and many people die, but now we don't look to Satan to treat the patients, and we don't advise parents to give their children only herbs and vinegar to eat.
roentare
one would certainly hope so. If science and medicine didn't look for reforms over the decades and centuries, we would be just as religious and superstitious as our medieval ancestors :(
But note!! Robert Kennedy, head of HHS vigorously opposed Federal and State Covid restrictions and was very superstitious regarding the safety of COVID vaccines. Recently he even moved to remove recommendations for COVID vaccines for children.
Joe
Yes!
I suspect Covid has given us a great deal of insight into how communities and families suffered during the Bubonic Plague and other epidemics. Yet some modern countries still didn't allow lockdowns, vaccines, closing schools down or mandatory masks.
Erika
Harvard noted that the Black Death wiped out as much as half the populated world. Now scientists are asking whether survivors of that pandemic had a genetic advantage that allowed them to avoid infection, and if so, did the genetic advantage continue through later pandemics?
I know that pioneering studies analysing the DNA of ancient skeletons found mutations that may have helped some people survive the plague.
Andrew
Ha:) Remember "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". It was set during the bubonic plague epidemic when one of the men was walking through a village, making loud noises and shouting "bring out your dead". I wonder if people knew what "bring out your dead" meant in the years before tv was invented.
In autumn 1900 the Bubonic plague appeared in Glasgow. The reappearance of the disease 250 years later was a rude awakening. It underlined that the City was not immune to the plague - the physical conditions necessary for its spread were still prevalent. The cases began in the crowded and unsanitary Gorbals tenements. Only 36 known cases and 16 deaths were recorded, due to the authorities' swift action. The first cases occurred in Rose Street Gorbals and soon other people in the neighbourhood began contracting and dying. Wakes for the dead were popular, particularly among the Gorbals Irish. It was discovered that some of the later victims were among100 people who had attended Mrs Bogie’s wake. Various causes of the deaths were given but the diagnosis of plague was made by a doctor in Belvidere Hospital.
The Sanitary Authorities were quick to act. They looked for anyone who might have had contact with the Bogie family and managed to track the spread of the plague. Those who had attended Mrs Bogie’s wake were quarantined in a “reception house” so they could be monitored. Houses were fumigated and evacuated. Clothing and bedding were disinfected. Staff in hospitals and reception houses were inoculated and wakes were prohibited. Publicity was avoided to try and prevent panic, and the outbreak was contained.
The official report in 1901 concluded that the most likely cause was an infected rat carried aboard one of the many ships from around the world that had visited the port of Glasgow. However, new research by a team at Oslo University has established that the rats were wrongly blamed, and the real culprits were humans. The high number of secondary plague infections occurred between members of the same household. This suggested that body lice or human fleas may have been to blame. The city’s authorities “dodged a bullet” using quarantining and basic human sanitation measures, which proved effective.
Glasgow Life
Thank you! This amazing story raises at least 2 important questions:
1. How did the authorities did not know ahead of time that the infected people came into Scotland from somewhere that already had Bubonic
Plague? Was an infected rat on the ship really to blame?
2. if quarantining proved effective, did that establish that body lice or human fleas were not in the "safe" living spaces.
Good to read more about the plague Hels. Thank you for your post.
Must have been somewhat dreadful for all those people living in those times - and most of us were concerned about Covid!
Margaret
How did people not know about all the pandemics that started in one country and then often expanded abroad??? We may not know about the medical crises in Uganda, but we certainly know about the:
Black Death of 1346-53 that killed 25-50 million.
The 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 25-49 million
Hongkong Flu of 1968-9 that killed 2-4 million
AIDS from 1981 on, that killed 45 milllion
Covid in 2019 that killed c35 million
Pandemics are inevitable; how they handled is open to community care and science.
what a nightmare. It is amazing how a major fire helped to rid the fleas that were killing people. Interesting post. Thanks.
gluten free,
Great point!
Now there are a few issues to be analysed carefully. Yes the Great Fire destroyed only two thirds of the houses in London, so if people survived the destruction, where did they flee to and did they take the plague with them? And who rebuilt the homes if the most of the working men had already been killed in the 1665 Bubonic Plague? Finally why did the Great Fire not promote efforts to get rid of human waste in this crowded city?
I find it interesting how look it look people to figure out about basic handwashing and slow certain things down.
peppylady
Nothing should surpise us...we always find earlier generations to be unbelievably dumb!
2 million mainly young people died from infections, typhus and influenza in World War One and not a single military scientist looked for or studied an antibiotic :(
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