In the spring of 1665, an epidemic of the bubonic plague emerged in London, England. The plague began in the parish of Saint Charles in the Fields, a poor area outside of London’s walls. And a spring turned to a hot summer, it became an epidemic.
The second plague pandemic is speculated to have started in China and spread through Europe through trade. The bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is transmitted by fleas that live on rats. Victims would have symptoms including fever, coughing up blood, and painful buboes, blisters and bruises on the body. Victims typically died within days of catching the illness.
The poorest areas were the most unsanitary, with rubbish and waste littering the streets and were therefore the hardest hit by the plague. Doctors were also too expensive for most people although their treatment was limited in its effectiveness because they thought miasmas, or bad air, was the cause of the plague. The rich meanwhile, as they could afford to, fled the city. King Charles II and nobility, parliament and most merchants, lawyers and doctors fled while the poor remained. The Lord Mayor and aldermen1 also remained to keep order and stop the disease spreading further.
In June, the mayor closed the gates of London to people without a certificate of health, as the roads were bottlenecked2 from people trying to escape the city. By autumn, seven thousand people would die from the plague every week in the city. Watchmen were employed to enforce a quarantine. If a person was infected or had died of the plague, their whole family would be locked away with them in their house, sealed from the outside, and kept guard over. A red cross was then painted on the door to distinguish it. Soon enough, the whole family would be infected and would suffer the same way. A common sight was also drivers of dead-cars with piles of bodies who moved around the streets calling ‘Bring out your dead’ and the dead’ would be buried in mass graves.
As winter came, the spread of disease was slowed down. From December 1665, people started to return to London and by February 1666, the death toll had decreased to a level that was safe for the King to return. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people died in London from the Great Plague. After the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London would again engulf the city in disaster, but it may also have helped kill off some of the rats and fleas carrying the plague.”
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1 An alderman was a high-ranking member of a borough or county council. 2 A bottleneck : (ici) un bouchon, un embouteillage