Great Plague of 1665
In the registration books of London parishes of the 16th and 17th centuries, the following causes of death are indicated: swelling, fever, consumption, rash, bruises, exhaustion. But most often there is one terrible word - plague.
Plague appeared in London early: the first disease was recorded in the 7th century. Between 1563 and 1603 she tormented London five times, and in the last year, 1603, she killed about thirty thousand inhabitants. But the most devastating was the epidemic of 1665.
The first patients appeared in the parish of St. Giles at the very end of 1664. The infection was brought into the city by black rats - they are ship, or domestic. These creatures are the original inhabitants of London: their bones were found during excavations in layers dating back to the 4th century. They may have sailed from South Asia on Roman ships and have never left the city since. Severe cold weather at the beginning of 1665 prevented the spread of the infection for some time, but by the spring the lists of the dead began to lengthen, and in July the plague penetrated the city.
Contemporaries write that deathly silence looms over London. The summer was dry and hot, and the weather was completely calm. All shops and markets were closed, only "corpse trucks" drove through the streets. It was so quiet that all over the Old Town you could hear the water gurgling under the bridge. Huge bonfires blazed at intersections and main streets, and their fumes mingled with the smells of the dead and the dying. It looked like life in London was over.
The law that "every grave must be at least six feet deep" was issued at that time and remained in force for three centuries.
The plague receded only in February 1666, hitting every third inhabitant of the 200,000-strong city. But the Londoners who had barely survived took a breath, as after the pestilence came fire, as if in order to finally wipe London off the face of the earth.
Promotional video:
The great fire of 1666
For the modern tourist, two-thousand-year-old London does not at all give the impression of an old city.
Indeed, buildings that are more than 400 years old can be counted on one hand. And there is a reason for this. The radical "rejuvenation" of London was caused by a terrible fire in 1666, which almost wiped out the city from the face of the earth.
The fatal spark broke out on Sunday, September 2, 1666, at two o'clock in the morning, at Thomas Fariner's bakery in Pudding Lane. The causes of the fire remain unclear - contemporaries blamed the Catholics for the arson, although the poorly covered view may be to blame. Be that as it may, but by noon half of London Bridge and three hundred houses in the northern part of the city were on fire. By the end of Tuesday, strong winds killed St. Paul's Cathedral and Guildhall, and a front of fire stretched in a huge arc from Temple to the outskirts of the Tower. The royal citadel itself was saved by the navy, which bombed the nearby neighborhoods, but this was the only luck of the firefighters. Fortunately, on Wednesday, when the fate of the city seemed to be a foregone conclusion, the wind suddenly dropped, and by Friday the fire was extinguished.
In fact, there was nothing to save: the city was a scorched desert. The fire consumed 13,200 houses and 87 churches. The damage was estimated at 10 million pounds, while the annual income of the mayor's office was 12 thousand pounds. The only gratifying moment was that by some miracle, only eight people became victims of the fire.
In the immediate aftermath of the Great Fire, there were calls to leave London and build the capital elsewhere. However, the Aldermen Council decided to rebuild the city.
By 1672 London was largely rebuilt, but not wooden, but brick. Of the 51 churches rebuilt after the fire, 50 were built by the architect Christopher Wren. The whole forest of its signature spiers and today largely organizes the urban space. He also designed the famous column with the statue of Charles II, marking the site of the fire and celebrating the deliverance of the city from the machinations of the Catholic arsonists.
