London, Coronavirus, and The Great Plague of 1665

The last time London experienced anything like the current coronavirus restrictions was nearly four hundred years ago, in 1665. It became known as the Great Plague of London, although earlier epidemics probably killed a higher proportion of the population. How did the 1665 epidemic compare to what the city is going through in 2020? 

The outbreak of plague began slowly in the spring, accelerated in the summer. and peaked in September. It declined during the late fall. By early 1666 it was all but over. By then it had killed @100,000 people out of a pre-plague population of @450-500,000. At its height in September, 7000 deaths per week were recorded, but that was surely an undercount. Many deaths went unreported.

Nearly half the people fled London during the epidemic, obeying what was thought to be the best prescription of the time: "Flee from the infected." Thus, the mortality rate among those who remained was probably close to 50%. The royal government did not make any attempt to stop the exodus. In fact, the king and his court fled, to Salisbury, then to Oxford.

Fleeing was more feasible for people of means: aristocracy, gentry, and wealthy merchants and professionals, including clergymen and physicians. Most of them had houses in the country, or relatives they could stay with. The physicians could do little against the plague; staying would have had little impact.

People below those groups fled as well, but they often had no fixed place to go. Inhabitants of villages and towns in the areas outside London often chased them away, fearing the spread of the infection. Many people were forced into the woods, to beg, steal, scavenge, and sometimes die of starvation or exposure.

The plague spread anyway, although not as much as during the Black Death of the 14th century. One of the most famous places it spread to the was the tiny village of Eyam, whose inhabitants quarantined themselves to protect nearby villages and towns, at great cost to themselves.

To their credit, the Lord Mayor and most city officials remained at their posts. The city distributed some food aid to the people. Farmers from the nearby countryside brought food. They left it outside the city gates, and negotiated prices at a distance. People who came to buy collect it left coins in buckets filled with water to disinfect them.

There was no official "lockdown" but people were urged to keep their social distance. Just as today, many people refused to observe sensible precautions. The diarist Samuel Pepys recorded with dismay that people continued to gather in businesses and shops and attend large funerals. One evening he stood looking longingly at a jolly group of people socializing in a tavern, but turned away, having decided he did not wish to die for a drink.

The authorities ordered the building of temporary pest houses to quarantine the infected, who would have overwhelmed the few hospitals. The city also employed mandatory house quarantine. Whenever the infection broke out in any household, everyone in the house was shut up with the sick person, which could be a death sentence for all the residents. Crosses would be painted on the house doors to warn others away.

Contemporaries recalled hearing the screams of the sick and terrified in the shut up houses. People naturally tried to escape these confinements, so guards were posted outside the houses to prevent it. Rioters sometimes broke open the houses and released the residents. Sometimes the guards were bribed to let the residents  escape. Most shops eventually closed, because their owners had fled or died.


The streets were eerily quiet except for the dead carts going around to pick up the dead, who were often dumped in mass graves. Grass began to grow in the streets due to the lack of traffic.

As the number of deaths mounted, the authorities closed alehouses and limited the number of lodgers who could stay in a household. They ordered a cull of cats and dogs, in the belief that they might carry the plague. That probably made things worse, since these animals killed many rats, whose fleas were major transmitters to humans. The city government also ordered the burning of fires in the streets, based on the widespread belief that miasma, or bad air, was the cause of the disease. The fires were supposed to disinfect the air.

One of the best accounts of the Great Plague of 1665 in London is a work of fiction. Daniel Defoe wrote The Journal of the Plague Year in 1721. It was what we would call a potboiler today, written due to heightened interest in and fear of plague. A major epidemic of plague had broken out in Marseilles, France, and it was commonly believed that it would move on to London. In the event it did not. The 1665 plague was the last major outbreak in the UK.

Despite being fictional, Defoe's work was soundly based on official documents, eyewitness reports, and a few short written accounts. Defoe lived in London at the time of the plague, although he was only five years old at the time. His uncle, Henry Foe, may have been a major source of information. Foe stayed in London throughout the plague. He was a saddler. Defoe's narrator in the journal is a saddler. At the end of the book are the initials "HF."

The contemporary woodcut below provides some sense of Londoners' experiences during the Great Plague. Death is everywhere, even following those who flee the city. On the far right, those fleeing are being stopped by armed countryfolk telling them to keep out.

As if London hadn't been punished enough, the following year brought the Great Fire of London. The fire raged for five days, between September 2-6 and destroyed 4/5ths of the city inside the old Roman Wall, including St. Paul's Cathedral and 87 parish churches. Amazingly, only six people were killed.

Further Reading: A. Lloyd Moote, Dorothy C. Moote, The Great Plague: The Story of London's Deadliest Year (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).




 

The Plague Village: Eyam, Derbyshire

In the summer of 1665, the last and one of the worst plague epidemics struck London. In all, the Great Plague of London killed around 100,000 people, almost one fourth of the population. Those who could, especially royalty, the aristocracy and the wealthy, fled to the countryside in hopes of escaping infection. Others continued their usual businesses, which often involved traveling around the country. 

Those who left the city risked spreading the disease, and sometimes they did. Other cities and towns, including Colchester, Norwich, Lincoln, and Peterborough, had major epidemics in 1665-66. So did a small, isolated Derbyshire village. 

Tucked away in the rural beauty of the Peak District, Eyam (pronounced "Eem") must have seemed as safe a place as one could be. 

Indeed, none of the surrounding villages or towns was visited by the dreaded disease on this occasion. 

One can imagine then Eyam's shock when George Viccars, a visitor who had come to help the local tailor, died of plague on 7 September. The source of his infection seems to have lurked in a flea-infested bale of cloth that had arrived from London the previous week. The story goes that Viccars had opened the bale and hung it in front of the fireplace to dry, thus unwittingly exposing himself to aroused and hungry fleas. (Below: The Tailor's House)

The role of fleas in spreading plague was then unknown, and would not become accepted until more than 200 years later. Today, epidemiologists have determined that plague can also be spread by human to human contact, through coughing and sneezing. This explains how the disease could sometimes spread with great rapidity.

Five more people died before the end of September, but the epidemic had barely begun. By the end of the year the death toll was 42, and it got worse. Before it ended 14 months later, the village's population had been reduced by hundreds of souls. 

The exact number of deaths is uncertain, as is the population of Eyam at the time. The parish register lists 260 plague deaths, but some deaths may have gone unrecorded. Population estimates for Eyam in 1665 range from 350 to 800, with the latter figure including people who lived in nearby hamlets and farms.

Some families lost nearly all their members. Twelve people named Frith died, thirteen named Talbot. Elizabeth Hancock lost her husband and six of her children within eight days in August 1666. She buried them herself, while people from a nearby village looked on, fearing to become infected if they helped. The gravesite is now protected by the National Trust. 

What singles out Eyam, however, is not its death toll or remoteness. It is the courageous decision the villagers made early in 1666: they agreed to quarantine themselves from the outside world. Many of them had been thinking about fleeing, but in the end only a handful of people left, among them the local aristocratic family.
   
The idea of remaining and isolating themselves came from the parish rector, William Mompesson. Urging people to stay and risk death to save lives elsewhere would have been difficult for anyone, but Mompesson had a special handicap. Most of the villagers didn't like or trust him. (Image: William Mompesson)

Mompesson was a newcomer, having arrived in Eyam only the year before. Worse, he had replaced a popular rector, Thomas Stanley. During the Civil War (1642-49) and the Republic or Commonwealth (1649-1660), Stanley had supported the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell. So had most of Eyam's people. 

After the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660, Parliament passed an act that required the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in the churches. The Puritan Stanley refused to to conform and was ejected from his position and house. When the plague broke out he was living as a recluse on the edge of the village. 

As the death toll from plague mounted, Mompesson reached out to the man he had replaced. Stanley agreed to promote the quarantine plan among the villagers. Most accepted it, however grudgingly, but the wealthiest family in the village left. 

The Earl of Devonshire, who lived at nearby Chatsworth, agreed to supply Eyam with food and other necessities during the period of isolation, as did others in the surrounding villages. 

Various markers, often large stones, were placed around the perimeter of the village to mark a boundary which no one from outside should enter and no one from Eyam should pass. The stone below is today called the Boundary Stone. The holes were drilled to hold coins. Eyam's villagers would put coins into them to pay for things people from other villages brought to them. They poured vinegar in the holes as well, believing it would disinfect the coins. (Image: Boundary Stone)

Mompesson's Well (below) as it is known today, was another place where villagers left coins to pay for food and medicines.   

Eyam's St. Lawrence's Church was closed for the duration of the plague. Religious services were held in a natural amphitheatre called Cucklett Delf. There, the residents could stand far apart from one another in hopes of stemming the infection.  

Cucklett Delf.

The precaution was reasonable, but the deaths continued to mount. August 1666 was the deadliest month, with 78 deaths, among them  Mompesson's wife Catherine, aged 27. She is buried in the village churchyard. Mompesson had the memorial below built for her.  

The disease finally receded in the autumn of 1666. It had probably burned itself out, having infected nearly everybody. The last victim died on November 1. 

The courageous decision to quarantine the village probably increased the death toll in Eyam, but it prevented the plague spreading to surrounding areas and killing far more. 

Stanley and Mompesson survived the ordeal. Stanley remained in Eyam until his death in 1670. Mompesson moved to another parish in 1669, where he was ostracised for a time by the residents, who had heard about the plague in Eyam and feared he might infect them. 


Further reading: Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders (2001). Novel about the plague in Eyam. Names have been changed and some incidents invented, but the novel provides a good sense of what the Eyam plague must have been like from the villagers' perspective.