London was hit by the Great Plague in 1665 but in fact it was one of a succession of pestilences that overtook the English capital. In the years 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625 and 1636, there were plagues with similarly devastating consequences.
The 1625 plague saw thousands of red crosses painted on the doors of the infected. These victims couldn’t leave and nobody was permitted to enter. This was quarantine seventeenth century style. And according to one pamphlet of the time – the plague crosses struck terror into the population:
Foure thousand Red-Crosses have frighted the Inhabitants in a very little time, but greater is their number who have beene frighted and fled out of the City at the setting up of those Crosses
England’s Lord Have Mercy Upon Us – Thomas Dekker
The 1665 plague has stuck in our minds very vividly for two key reasons. One was that the journalist and author Daniel Defoe wrote a powerful and gripping account of it a few years later. And the other is that the 1665 Great Plague was followed a year later in 1666 by the Great Fire – which destroyed a large part of London.
At its height, about 15,000 people a week were dying during the 1665 plague. In a city that lacked proper sanitation and where people lived in close proximity, in dreadful slum conditions, disease spread rapidly. Open sewers and the dumping of refuse made for a major rodent problem – and the rats bore the fleas, which transmitted the plague.
Frightened citizens resorted to homespun cures like chewing tobacco, garlic, or unripe walnuts. May not have warded off the plague but the copious amounts of garlic would have warded off the neighbours. During huge amounts of “sack” – sherry, basically – was also touted as a cure. May not have worked but dulled the senses during a horrific experience. Some quack doctors cautioned against drinking water – which may have been useless in the face of bubonic plague but would eventually be recognised as the leading factor in the spread of cholera.
Despite everything, London’s population continued to grow rapidly despite the terrible plague. This was due to a steady influx of people from the countryside into the city and also – as with Coronavirus – the ability of the wealthier to avoid the worst of the plague.
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Basically, richer families continued to expand and reproduce while poorer families bore the main brunt of each wave of plague. Some saw this rather cruelly as a natural order of things.
The 1665 plague happened in the years following the end of the Cromwellian Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles II. We’re often led to believe that these were years of jolly revelry and colour. But in fact more most Londoners this was a period of plague, fire, poverty and war.
I’ve been on UKTV’s Private Lives of the Monarchs documentary series talking about the scandals that have enveloped various kings in history.
This was the programme on Charles II and his less than gallant handling of the Great Plague in London. Basically, he fled the city as thousands of Londoners perished of the bubonic plague – a truly grim way to go!
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