The Plague in London
Bubonic plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestisbacterium which is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected rat flea. The Great Plague (1665–1666) was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the Kingdom of England. It happened within the centuries-long time period of the Second Pandemic, an extended period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which began in Europe in 1347, the first year of the "Black Death", and lasted until 1750. During the winter of 1664, a bright comet was to be seen in the sky and the people of London were fearful, wondering what evil event it portended. London at that time consisted of a city of about 448 acres surrounded by a city wall, which had originally been built to keep out raiding bands. There were gates at Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate and Bishopsgate and to the south lay the River Thames and London Bridge. It was a city of great contrasts ranging from large houses for the rich in Whitehall and Covent Garden employing sixty servants, to town houses and timber-framed Tudor houses projecting over the streets, to tenements and garrets crowded with the poor people. There was no sanitation and open drains flowed along the centre of winding streets. The cobbles were slippery with animal dung, garbage and the slops thrown out of the houses, muddy and buzzing with flies in summer and awash with sewage in winter. The City Corporation employed "rakers" to remove the worst of the filth and it was transported to mounds outside the walls where it accumulated and continued to decompose. The stench was overwhelming and people walked around with handkerchiefs or nosegays pressed against their nostrils. When someone died, a bell was rung and a "searcher of the dead" arrived to inspect the corpse to determine the cause of death. Searchers were ignorant, venal old women who were paid a pittance for each report they made to the clerk who kept the records. In the case of a plague death, a searcher might be bribed to mis-state the true cause of death. This was because the infected house of a plague victim had, by law, to be shut up for forty days quarantine with all other members of the household inside. A plague house was marked with a red cross on the door with the words "Lord have mercy upon us", and a watchman stood guard outside. The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Great Britain. Some previous outbreaks were the 1603 plague, which killed 30,000 Londoners, the 1625 plague with some 35,000 deaths, and the 1636 plague, when there were about 10,000 deaths. At the time of the Great Plague, it was not understood how the disease was caused. Emanations from the earth, "pestilential effluviums", unusual weather, sickness in livestock, abnormal behaviour of animals or increase in numbers of moles, frogs, mice or flies were among popular theories. It was not until 1894 that the identification by Alexandre Yersin of its causal agent Yersinia pestis was made and the transmission of the bacterium by rat fleas became known.