Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
The Great Plague (1665-1666) was a massive outbreak of disease in England that killed 75,000 to 100,000 people, up to a fifth of London's population.[1] The disease was historically identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted via a rat vector. The 1665-1666 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier "Black Death", a virulent outbreak of disease in Europe between 1347 and 1353, but was remembered afterwards as the "great" plague because it was one of the last widespread outbreaks in England.[2]
[edit] Possible causes
At the time the outbreak was blamed upon the French. In early April 1665, two infected French sailors were said to have collapsed and died at the junction of Drury Lane and Long Acre. These cases were said to have brought about all subsequent infections. This theory has been largely dismissed as anti-French propaganda. The British outbreak is actually thought to have originated from the Netherlands, where the bubonic plague had occurred intermittently since 1599, with the initial contagion arriving with Dutch trading ships carrying bales of cotton from Amsterdam. The dock areas outside of London, including the parish of St. Giles-in-the Fields where poor workers crowded into ill-kept structures, were the first areas struck by the plague. Personal and public hygiene was very minimal during this period, contributing to the spread of disease. During the winter of 1664-1665, there were reports of several deaths. However, the very cold winter seemingly controlling the contagion. But spring and summer months were unusually warm and sunny, and the plague spread rapidly. As records were not kept on the deaths of the very poor, the first recorded case was a Margaret Porteous, on April 12, 1665.
Although the disease causing the epidemic has historically been identified as bubonic plague and its variants, no direct evidence of plague has ever been uncovered. Some modern scholars suggest that the symptoms and incubation period indicate that the causal agent may have been a disease monkey issimilar to a viral hemorrhagic fever.[citation needed]
[edit] Outbreak
By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself. King Charles II of England, his family and his court left the city for the upper-class area of Oxfordshire. However, the Lord Mayor of the city and the aldermen stayed at their posts. Businesses were closed when most wealthy merchants and professionals fled. Only a small number of clergymen (including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London), physicians and apothecaries chose to remain, as the plague raged throughout the summer. Plague doctors would traverse the streets, diagnosing victims, although many of them were unqualified physicians.
Several public health efforts were attempted. Physicians were hired by city officials, and burial details were carefully organized. Authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in hopes that the air would be cleansed. Substances giving off strong odours, such as pepper, hops or frankincense, were also burned to ward off the infection. London residents were strongly urged to smoke tobacco.
Though concentrated in London, the outbreak affected other areas of the country. Perhaps the most famous example was the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. The plague arrived with a merchant carrying a parcel of cloth sent from London. The villagers imposed a quarantine on themselves to stop the further spread of the disease. Spread of the plague was slowed in surrounding areas, but the cost to the village was the death of around 75% of its inhabitants.
Records state that deaths in London crept up to 1,000 people per week, then 2,000 people per week and, by September 1665, to 7,000 persons per week. By late autumn, the death toll began to slow until, in February 1666, it was considered safe enough for the King and his entourage to return to the city. By this time, however, trade with the European continent had spread this outbreak of plague to France, where it died out the following winter.
Plague cases continued at a modest pace until September 1666. On September 2nd and 3rd, the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the most crowded housing. At about the same time, the plague outbreak tapered off, probably due to most of the susceptible persons having already died. After the fire, London was rebuilt on an urban plan originally drafted by architect Christopher Wren which included widened streets, reduced congestion and basic sewage-drainage systems, under the idea that rats may have caused or spread the plague. Due to the severe fire hazard they cause, thatched roofs were forbidden within the city, and remain forbidden under modern codes. The second rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in 1997 required a special permit to have thatched roofs.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Bell, Walter George. "The Great Plague in London in 1665." London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1924.
- History of the Plague in England by Daniel Defoe
- Plague - Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911
[edit] See also
- Loimologia, a first-hand account of the 1665 plague
- Black Death
- Bubonic Plague
- Derby plague of 1665
- Eyam
- Ring a Ring o' Roses
Annotations
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sample Before we leave to discourse of the Casualties, we shall add something concerning that greatest Disease, or Casualty of all, The Plague.
There have been in London, within this Age, four Times of great Mortality, that is to say, the years 1592, and 1593, 1603, 1625, and 1636.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Estephan/Graunt/4.html
death toll: Anno 1636 from April to December… 23359
Whereof of the Plague …. 10400
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Great Plague of London
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“The Great Plague (1665-1666) was a massive outbreak of disease in England that killed 75,000 to 100,000 people, up to a fifth of London’s population. The disease is generally believed to have been bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted via a rat vector. Other symptom patterns of the bubonic plague, such as septicemic plague and pneumonic plague were also present….This episode of plague in Britain is thought to have arrived with Dutch trading ships carrying bales of cotton from Amsterdam. The disease had occurred intermittently in the Netherlands since 1654.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_London -
John Graunt’s “Bills of Mortality”, cited above by vicente, was published in 1662. http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Graunt/bills.html
The next outbreaks of plague of concern to the British in late 1663 were those feared to be found aboard Dutch trading ships from Amsterdam. “The disease had occurred intermittently in the Netherlands since 1654.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_London -
Since the plague has begun its entry on stage…
Here’s a picture of the little bugger.
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Yersinia
and a nice description of its life/infection cycle.
http://www.kcom.edu/faculty/chamberlain/website/lectures/lecture/plague.htm
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And here’s some look at how they identify y.pestis in those ancient corpses…
http://abc.zoo.ox.ac.uk/Research_Plague.htm -
And a link to an article by one of the champions of an alternate theory on the plague, (namely that the spread of the epidemic and environmental conditions strongly suggest it was not y. pestis but a virus), Justin Champion (I know, I know)
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And a bit on the heroic village, Eyam, which isolated its population to save the rest of country England…
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Likewise arguing against the y. pestis…In this case that other diseases (cholera) must have been involved with y.p., Graham Twigg. (I have to say I’ve found his argument on temperature unconvincing). http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/epitwig.html
A cautionary short note by medical historian RS Roberts on accepting early accounts of the plagues at face value… http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=345026
(I had a similar discussion with the listserv group of the American Society for Microbiology… In short we need a better system for properly defining and catagorizing plague descriptions from the 17th century back, especially from the 14th century. Too many accounts were not only copied by multiple hands across the centuries with loads of error and details added often for effect but then were compiled in the 19th century by historians and antiquarians with little or no medical training who added their own distortions. Many articles and books we read on the ancient and medieval plagues today are therefore badly flawed in their source materials-so read them with a grain of salt…and one rule of thumb: The more certain they are as to the causes of plague, the more likely they are not doing the details.)
That said one of the best accounts of the 1665 plague is of course a work of fiction, Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year” http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/d/defoe/daniel/d31j/
And finally, some background by Steven Greenberg, medical historian, on public health measures available at the time, along with the interesting argument that the Stuart regimes were quite active in trying to increase public awareness of plague http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=226297&blobtype=pdf I hope to include one of the articles discussing anthrax as a possible co-culprit.