Plague- Outbreak in London (1665-1666)

by Tony Bradman

  It had always been believed that our bodies contained four liquids, or “humours” – blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. These had to be kept in balance or we would fall ill. One way to prevent that happening was to “bleed” people. That meant opening a vein and allowing some blood to drain out, which would restore the balance of the humours. Samuel told me that a member of the Royal Society – a clever man called Robert Boyle – thought that was nonsense. He believed instead that everything in the world was actually made up of tiny particles we couldn’t see, and that tiny particles of the pestilence might find their way into our bodies and make us fall ill.

  It made sense to me. After all, the pestilence often seemed to pass from person to person, especially if they touched each other or were cooped up together in a confined space. People had always suspected that was what happened, but without knowing how. This idea of particles was one way it could be explained, I thought. The plague particles might be passed on by a sick person’s breath or through their sweat.

  “So you don’t think the plague is caused by a poisonous miasma, or that it’s a punishment from God?” I asked Samuel. “But that’s what a lot of people believe, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t dare to think that I know what God’s plans are,” Samuel said. “As for the theory of the miasma … well, that may have some merit, but it has always seemed strange to me that the pestilence starts in places where the poor live, and where there are lots of other diseases. Poverty and disease go together, Daniel, and sometimes I think we could cure disease if we cured poverty. It is also strange that some people, such as you and I, seem to be able to resist the illness. And then there are even those who seem doomed but survive. I have heard reports of several people who were left to die at the side of plague pits but then recovered.”

  I began to understand why Samuel had asked me so many questions about my experiences. This was the method pursued by Samuel and his friends – ask as many questions as possible and write down all the answers so you could see any hidden patterns that would lead to the causes of things being revealed. I found it all really fascinating and eventually I asked Samuel if I could help him with his work.

  “I could carry your bag when you go to visit the sick,” I suggested one evening. “I could even help you with your notes – I can read and write quite well.”

  “That is a generous offer, Daniel,” he said. “But I do not think I can accept.”

  “What are you talking about, Samuel?” Abigail said crossly. She often sat with us and joined in with our conversations about Samuel’s work. “I insist you do as Daniel asks. It will mean that you have someone sensible with you, someone who can make sure you come to no harm. Consider your offer accepted, Daniel.”

  I smiled to myself. Samuel and Abigail had not been married long. Abigail was much younger than her husband, perhaps only twenty, and she loved him deeply and was fiercely protective of him. She worried about him whenever he was out of the house, because she knew he went to dangerous places. He had also brought back other needy souls before me, the waifs and strays she had mentioned when I first arrived. Some had been less than honest, which explained why she had been so stern with him when he had brought me home. I was proud to know I was the first “waif” they had taken in.

  “Don’t worry, Abigail,” I said. “I promise that I will look after him.”

  Now Abigail smiled and I knew I had said the right thing.

  August turned into September and the hot weather broke at last. One morning in the middle of the month a cool wind swept in from the west, bringing rain in its skirts, and our stricken city seemed to sigh with relief. The plague began to abate as well – every day the number of the dead on the Bills of Mortality grew less and less.

  But for me there was one more strange surprise to come.

  CHAPTER

  10

  A mild, wet autumn turned into a cold winter and the plague finally slowed down. Samuel said that if Robert Boyle’s theory was right, then perhaps the cold made the plague particles move more slowly than in the heat of the summer. Other people simply said that God had heard our prayers at last and had decided to show us his love and mercy.

  Whatever the reason, things slowly began to return to normal in the city. In the new year – the year of our Lord 1666 – the dead carts were no longer seen in the streets and the plague pits were filled with quicklime to speed up the decay of the bodies, then covered with a thick layer of soil. Some people still fell ill, but there were fewer with each passing week and they were no longer locked in their houses.

  Those who had fled gradually began to return, leaving behind their makeshift camps on the edge of the city. The poor came back first, because they often had nowhere else to go, although many families were scattered across the counties around London. Then came the middling sort, eager to get their businesses reopened. The rich came back in the spring, including King Charles and his family. Soon the streets were lively again and a visitor who had never seen London before might have been forgiven for thinking that the plague had not been so bad after all.

  I knew differently, however. There were too many empty houses, and wherever I looked the streets seemed full of ghosts. The shadow of the plague still hung over those of us who had survived. The laughter I heard was brittle and forced, and I saw many more sad faces than happy ones. Samuel said the pestilence had been a terrible disaster – over 100,000 people had died in London, around one person in every four who had lived in the city.

  The rule of law returned to the city with the king. He and the Lord Mayor put soldiers on the streets, and before long many rogues were brought to justice. For a while the courts were kept busy. So were the executioners at Tyburn to the west of the city, the crossroads where those who broke the law had always been hanged. That’s where Bad Barnaby ended his days, anyway, along with Ned and George. Samuel told me they had been caught while trying to rob a man and condemned to death. They were hanged together on a blustery day in March. I was not sorry to hear of their fate, even though I knew it would have been more Christian to forgive them for what they had done to me. Abigail told me not to be so hard on myself when I admitted how I felt.

  “They treated you cruelly, Daniel,” she said. “God knows that, and he will look into your heart and forgive you for how you feel.”

  Not long after that I discovered what had happened to Josiah. I was out with Samuel one day, accompanying him on a visit to a sick family, when I realized we were walking along Blowbladder Street. I paused to glance down the familiar alley. A bright red cross had been painted on Josiah’s door, along with the usual words, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us. It seemed that the plague had caught up with this Doctor Beak after all.

  Soon spring turned into another hot, dry summer. Samuel and Abigail made it clear they were happy for me to stay with them for as long as I liked. Samuel even talked of taking me on as his apprentice. I loved learning from him, it was as if a whole new life was opening up before me, one in which I could do something truly worthwhile. I thought that Mother and Father would have been proud to see how well I was progressing.

  The horrors I had seen and experienced had faded in my mind too. Why then did I feel so restless? I fell back into my old habit of roaming the streets, almost as if I were searching for something. Then one day I realized it was not something, but someone – I had no proof that Mother had died, and a tiny part of me had never given up hope she might still be alive and that we would be reunited. Whenever I glimpsed a woman of the same age or height, my heart would start hammering, but it was never her. One time, I was sure I heard a voice that sounded exactly like hers in the next street, but when I ran round the corner, nobody was there.

  Then the Great Fire came, and seemed to burn away the past entirely.

  The fire started that September in a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane, then spread to most of the city. Only those of us who were there during the four nights and three days of the fire know what it was like – the roaring flames a
nd choking smoke, the hellish heat, the sheer terror and panic among the people of a city that had already suffered so much.

  Once more, the roads out of the city were choked with carts and coaches and those fleeing on foot. For a while it seemed the flames would burn on until they destroyed the whole of England, swept on by an east wind. But at last they began to recede. Some said it was because the wind dropped, others because the king’s soldiers used gunpowder to blow up rows of buildings and create firebreaks to stop it spreading. Most people didn’t care why it had stopped and were just glad it was over.

  We were lucky in Leadenhall Street. The fire came close enough for the roof to get a little singed, but that was all. Samuel worked long hours helping those who had been burned or made ill by the smoke and Abigail took in many of their friends who had been made homeless. I did whatever I could, going out with Samuel to be his assistant and helping the servants around the house.

  It wasn’t until a week after the fire stopped that things seemed to calm down. One morning I felt that old restlessness again and I set off to roam the streets. I was also curious to see what the flames had done to my city. The answer was shocking – I found almost nothing but ruins wherever I went, nearly every street burned to the ground, the buildings reduced to ashes, the air still reeking of fire and smoke.

  I walked up Cheapside and stood in front of old St Paul’s, or rather what was left of it. The central tower was standing, but the great roof had gone and the walls were black where the flames had licked at them. The inside was burned out and it looked as if the building might collapse any minute. Samuel had said people were already arguing about whether it should be saved or replaced by a completely new cathedral.

  I turned away and walked towards Bear Alley, heading back to where I began my journey over a year before. The fire had burned very fiercely here – to begin with I could not even find where Bread Street began. I worked it out eventually and walked along it to Bear Alley. At last I came to the ruin of my home.

  It had been almost entirely destroyed – only a part of one wall remained. Oddly enough, it was the wall with the window I had climbed out of that night, although that was now merely a scorched frame. I peered through it, as if I would be able to see into the past, to my home as it once was.

  Mother’s pale face stared back at me.

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. My mind was playing tricks on me, conjuring up her face in the window, as it had been the last time I’d seen her. I opened my eyes and she had gone. Then someone spoke behind me.

  “Daniel, is that really you?”

  I slowly turned round. It was Mother. She had come out of the ashes of our house and stood with one hand stretched out towards me. She wore a long black dress and a small cloak around her shoulders. Her neck was no longer swollen with the tokens of the sickness.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said, unable to take my eyes off her. “Are you a ghost?”

  It was the only possible explanation. Mother had died and gone to Heaven, and God had allowed her to return to Earth to visit me.

  “No, Daniel,” she said, smiling. “Touch my hand and I’ll prove it to you.”

  I reached out, our fingertips met and then she grasped my hand and pulled me towards her. I don’t know how long we held on to each other.

  “But I came back to the house the day after I escaped and you weren’t here,” I said. “I was sure you were dead. What happened? How did you survive?”

  “I don’t remember much,” she said. “I saw the watchman chasing you, but I must have fainted. I thought I would wake in Heaven, but my next memory is of Hell. Or at least, of something a lot like it. I was in a dead cart and being taken to a pit to be buried. Then they saw that I was alive and they left me by the side of the pit. A kindly priest found me and cared for me. He took me to a refuge.”

  Mother told me how she had recovered slowly and had stayed with several different families – friends of the priest who had first found her. When she was strong enough she had returned to London to search for me, convinced I must still be alive. I wondered how many times we had walked along the same streets and just missed each other. But none of that mattered any more. We were together again.

  I led Mother through the streets towards my new home, where I knew she would be welcome. My mind was racing. I had so much to tell her and so many questions to ask her. I had lots of plans too – I wondered if Mother could assist Abigail as I assisted Samuel. Perhaps they might even help her to find work as a seamstress again. But I knew one thing above all. For the time being at least I would take care of Mother as she had always taken care of me. I owed that much to her, and to Father and my brothers – they would have wanted me to look after her as well as I could.

  Somehow, I had survived the Great Plague and found my mother again. I prayed that we might both live ordinary, happy lives from this day forward.

  I had a feeling that we would.

  HISTORICAL NOTE:

  THE GREAT PLAGUE

  THE CITY OF LONDON

  In 1665 London was much smaller than it is now, but it was still the biggest city in England and the third biggest city in Europe after Paris and Rome. It had a population of at least 400,000. Most of the city’s buildings were still within the old Roman walls and north of the River Thames. The king’s palace at Whitehall was separate from the rest of London, and so was Westminster, where Parliament met in the shadow of the great abbey.

  There were some large buildings in London – great churches such as old St Paul’s Cathedral and the houses of rich families. But most of the streets were very narrow and the houses were small. They were built mostly of wood and had thatched roofs. There were no sewers and the streets were full of rubbish and waste. So it’s no surprise that there were rats everywhere.

  The seventeenth century was a difficult time for the people of London. The Civil War (1642–1651) between King Charles I and Parliament had been brutal, and the country was still politically divided. Then there was the outbreak of the Great Plague in 1665, which was followed by the Great Fire of 1666. The fire destroyed most of the city, including the great cathedral of Saint Paul’s, which was hundreds of years old. After a lot of debate, it was decided that London deserved a new cathedral with a beautiful dome. It was designed by the great architect Sir Christopher Wren, who played a major part in rebuilding the city. His cathedral still stands on Ludgate Hill to this day.

  THE PLAGUE

  Disease was a major cause of death in the seventeenth century. Medicine wasn’t very advanced, and doctors knew little about what caused most illnesses or how to effectively treat them. The plague had been around for a long time and there were many theories about what caused it, most of them wrong. We now know that it’s caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which is found in certain kinds of fleas. These fleas infected many of the rats in London and spread the sickness when they bit other creatures, including humans. When the Lord Mayor ordered all the cats in London to be killed, he took away one of the only things that kept the rats in check. More rats meant more fleas to infect people, who would then infect each other – especially if they were locked into houses together. There had been an outbreak of the plague in the Netherlands in the early 1660s, and some historians believe that infected rats from a Dutch ship brought the disease to London in early 1665.

  It’s hard to know exactly how many people died in the outbreak. The Bills of Mortality that Daniel saw pasted up were quite good at listing the numbers of the dead, but it’s difficult to work out how many of them were actually caused by the plague. People often didn’t want to admit that members of their family had died of the plague, so may have listed the cause of death as something else. But modern historians think that at least 100,000 people died of the plague, and perhaps more. The plague still exists today, but advances in medicine and improvements in living conditions mean that it is no longer such a terrible threat.

  THE PEOPLE

  Most of the people in this story are fictional
, including Daniel and his family, but their experiences are based on historical accounts of people who lived during the seventeenth century. Most Londoners were Protestant Christians, like Daniel’s parents, and there were also strict Protestants called Puritans who wanted to live a plain and simple life. During the plague, the authorities did appoint men like Bad Barnaby to be watchmen, and many of them took bribes from the people they were supposed to be keeping locked up and let them out – or broke in and looted their houses.

  There were also plenty of “plague doctors”, many of whom dressed as Doctor Beak and sold fake medicines to desperate people, like Josiah in the story. They were sometimes called “quack doctors” or just “quacks” because people said they talked so much when they were trying to sell their potions that they sounded like a flock of ducks quacking. But there were men like Samuel too, physicians who were increasingly trying to find out the real causes of diseases and work out ways to treat them successfully. It was the beginning of modern science – people were starting to question many things, including religion, and were attempting to build an understanding of the natural world around them. To this end, the Royal Society was founded in 1660, an organization that supported scientific thinking. Sir Christopher Wren was a member, as were many of the greatest thinkers of the time, including Sir Isaac Newton.

  King Charles I and his son King Charles II were real historical figures, as was the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Charles II died in 1685 and was followed onto the throne by his younger brother, James II. But James was even less popular than his father and brother, and was deposed in 1688. Parliament reasserted its power, and ever since then the king or queen has had had less political influence.