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In the winter of 1664-65, the bubonic
plague broke out in a very poor part of London. The poor lived in horrible conditions with no running water, no toilets and so disease spread really quickly.
The infection was, like last time and the Black Death, transmitted by rats. With all the rubbish around at the time, rats were everywhere. The smell
used to be so bad in London that people would walk around with handkerchiefs over their noses or pressed a nosegay, which would be a small bunch of flowers, up
against their noses, or more likely nose as most of us only have one, as far as I knows anyway.
The plague finally finished in December 1665 by which time a quarter of all the people who lived in London had died. If that happened today it would
be about 3 million people. In those days it was about 100,000 people. It was, however, the last outbreak of plague in England.
We know quite a lot about what was going on in London at these times as, in 1660, a man called Samuel Pepys started to write a diary. Pepys (pronounced
peeps) was a clerk in the Royal Navy based at Chatham. Later on he would become a member of Parliament. His diaries covered the years from 1660 to 1669 and give a
fascinating insight into mid-17th century life. He would write both about his own life and events and people around him.
We will have some quotes from Mr Pepys later. By the way when he was an MP, he was the MP for Harwich. Small world, so they say.
The ending of the plague was actually helped by another event which took place in 1666.
Forward to 1666AD
