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 the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population.[1] The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector.[citation needed] The 1665-1666 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier "Black Death" pandemic, a virulent outbreak of disease in Europe between 1347 and 1353.[2] The plague of 1665 was only remembered afterwards as the "great" plague because it was one of the last widespread outbreaks in England.[3]
[edit] Outbreak
The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major out-break of the plague in England, and the first since 1636, when some 10,000 had died, and 1625, when some 35,000 died.[4] In 1603, the plague killed 30,000 Londoners.[5] The English outbreak is thought to have spread 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. Amsterdam was ravaged in 1663–1664, with a mortality given as 50,000.[6] The dock areas outside of London, and the parish of St. Giles-in-the Fields where poor workers crowded into ill-kept structures, were the first areas struck by the plague. As records were not kept on the deaths of the very poor, the first recorded case was a Rebecca Andrews, on 12 April 1665.
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 Oxfordshire. However, the aldermen and the majority of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts. The Lord Mayor of the city, Sir John Lawrence also decided to stay in the city. Businesses were closed when most wealthy merchants and professionals fled. Only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to remain, as the plague raged throughout the summer. Among the people who chose to stay were Samuel Pepys, the diarist, and Henry Foe, a saddler who lived in East London. While Pepys provides an account of the Plague through his diary, Henry Foe's nephew Daniel Defoe published A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional account of the plague in 1722, possibly based on Foe's journals.
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. But panic spread through the city, and in the fear of contagion, people were hastily buried in overcrowded pits. The City Corporation ordered a cull of dogs and cats - a poor decision, since those animals kept the population of rats (the real culprits) in check. 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, in an attempt 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 allegedly arrived with a merchant carrying a parcel of cloth sent from London, although this is a disputed fact. 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 people 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 2 and 3 September, the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the centre of London. At about the same time, the plague outbreak tapered off. Although, it is now thought that the Plague had died off before the Great Fire of London and also the majority of plague cases were found in the suburbs of the city and not in the centre of London that was affected by the Fire.
[edit] See also
- Loimologia, a first-hand account of the 1665 plague
- Black Death
- Black Death in England
- Bubonic Plague
- Derby plague of 1665
- Eyam
- Plague! The Musical, a musical loosely based on the 1665 plague
[edit] References
- ^ The London Plague 1665
- ^ "BBC – History – Black Death". bbc.co.uk. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_09.shtml. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
- ^ Spread of the Plague
- ^ The Great Plague of 1665
- ^ London and the Great Plague of 1665
- ^ E. Social, economic, and political impacts of the plague on Eurasia and Africa, New York State Education Department
"Necropolis. London and its dead" by Catherine Arnold. Simon and Shuster, London, 2006.
[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
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.
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The Great Plague of London, 1665
Harvard Univ. Library Open Collections Program
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/vcsearch.php?cat=The+Great+Plague+of+London%2C+1665 -
cures : modern for our pets , still use some of those mentioned in the Harvard Letters [ see MR]:
The dog collar was not invented yet .
some of the modern flea modification:“dark brewer’s yeast, garlic, …..
peppermint oil, cinnamon oil, lemon grass oil, thyme oil and eugenol…..
of rosemary and cedar oil…..Cedarwood, Citronella and Rue.[ oils of Pennyroyal, Eucalyptus,not available then]….
now morph into
Pyrethrins are natural extracts made from flowers of chrysanthemum plants.
Nitenpyram
Citrus extracts, [contain d-Limonene or linalool.]
amongst other chemical derivatives
:
see other comments
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/05/24/index.php -
A good account:
“…It was the month of May that the plaque was first notice of;…”
bills of mortality. 9, then 8 , then 9, then 3 then 14 then 17, then 43…………
first week of June 43 to 112 then 168 then 470
pg 9.Terrible voice in the city by Br. Thomas Vincent See Wikipedia
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=_WoPAAAAYAAJ&dq=plague++thomas+vincent+&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=WsCfeunKVS&sig=JzXvkGaythkvJCaJfTHnvYF4Mxw -
For a Lecture (text & video) on the subject by Stephen Porter, Assistant Editor, Survey of London Section, English Heritage. Author of The Great Plague.
see
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For the 17th century concept of contagion, and its application to the Plague, see:
“The Emergence and Development of the Notion of Contagion, by F. Gonzalez-Crussi, MD, 2000”
http://www.childsdoc.org/spring2000/contagion.aspCf also the annotations on:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/06/29/
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notes from DeFoe at Guttenburg etexts
, whither, they say, it was brought (some said from
Italy, others from the Levant) among some goods which were
brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought
from Candia; others, from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence
it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.[4]……http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/7/2/2/17221/17221.htm
References in the diary
- 1661
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Aug: 16
- 1663
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Oct: 31
Nov: 26
- 1664
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May: 4
Jul: 25
Aug: 3
Sep: 24
- 1665
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Apr: 30
May: 24
Jun: 8, 10, 15, 17, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30
Jul: 1, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31
Aug: 2, 3, 10, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31
Sep: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 29, 30
Oct: 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 16, 31
Nov: 4, 5, 8, 10, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30
Dec: 13, 17, 20, 22, 27, 31
- 1666
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Jan: 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 22, 23, 29, 30, 31
Feb: 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20, 21, 22
Mar: 1, 12, 13, 14, 18, 22, 23
Apr: 5, 8, 9, 10, 22, 23, 25
May: 12
Jun: 6, 13
Jul: 4
Aug: 6, 9, 17
Sep: 13
Oct: 29
Nov: 20, 30
Dec: 7
- 1667
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Jan: 18