Great Plague of London

Caused by the transmission of the Yersinia pestis bacteria from rats to humans, borne by the Xenopsylla cheopis flea, before the age of scientific understanding, Black Death or Bubonic Plague ravaged Europe in 1347 and 48, returning to London three times, before its fourth and final outbreak in 1665. Symptoms of Bubonic Plague include fever and chills, severe headaches and malaise, nausea, vomiting, seizures, delirium and death.

God’s Tokens

Derived from the ancient Greek word Bubo, meaning swollen gland, buboes generally appear in the armpits and groin of their victim. Other symptoms include petechiae, or bruised, purplish skin splotches on the chest, back and neck, known as God’s tokens, since petechiae always meant that the victim had a fatal case of the disease. Diarists also reported that victims who appeared to be on death’s door from plague, smelled like they were as well.

Runaway Death Rates

First suspected in late 1664, by April of ‘65, Black Death spread in an easterly direction from the down-and-out suburb of St. Giles, onward through the crowded, rat-infested neighborhoods of Whitechapel and Stepney, finally overtaking the walled city of London. By September of 1665, death rates exceeded 8,000 per week, as helpless government officials abandoned all notions of quarantining the dead and dying. Wealthy Londoners soon fled for the countryside, while the destitute poor wandered the streets in fear, listening to the sound of “bring out your dead” as city workers stacked plague victims on carts bound for parish graveyards or communal plague pits such as Finsbury Field or Southwark.

Pets Slaughtered out of Fear

Fearing cats and dogs as the source of the contagion, tens of thousands were put down out of an abundance of caution, while physicians lanced the buboes of plague victims under the Galenistic misconception that a cure could be achieved by releasing trapped ill-humors. Diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of desperate people aimlessly wandering the streets in outright fear, later writing that bells rang out constantly, announcing the death or burial of yet another plague victim.

London Fire Ends Plague

The Great Plague ended on September 2nd, 1666, when fire broke out in the King’s bakery on Pudding Lane, burning much of London to the ground over the next four days of conflagration, torching some 13,200 homes and businesses, which forever reshaped the geographic footprint of central London. Taking some 100,000 lives—roughly a quarter of London’s population at the time, the Great Plague was the last to strike the city after centuries of sporadic outbreaks, making the Great Plague of 1665, yet another worst hard time for the London Town.