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in

1665 death stalk the Streets of

London the Great Plague killed 100,000

people one in three of the city's

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inhabitants we know something of the

horror of that summer through the

Diaries and letters of the wealthy and

the literate men like Samuel peeps who

kept a daily record of what he

saw but hidden in The Archives of

London's churches are other

stories preserved within Parish

documents are the experience es of

ordinary men and women who endured the

worst catastrophe of their

Century from these fragments we can

reconstruct the story of a single Street

and the people who lived in

it [ __ ] and key alley in the Parish of

St Dunston in the West Was squeezed into

one of the many dank and dismal yards

between Fleet Street and the Temps

in a cramped Courtyard behind a Tavern

30 poor families lived and worked

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[Music]

if we try and sort of categorize the

people in [ __ ] and Kei they're pretty

low down the social scale but they're

not the scum they're not the very Bas

froth as as some contempories would have

um talked about the sort of person who

is just clinging if you like to the

urban

economy William gurny was one of those

just about Clinging On on he ran the

Alley's Pub and sold groceries as a

sideline to support his wife Anne and

their

daughter like most children at the time

she too would have been expected to help

in the family

business John Gail was a blacksmith he

had a second job as a parish fireman and

was paid for maintaining an engine for

the quenching of fire to support his

wife and four children

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opposite him Liv Thomas bird whistle one

of the parish scavengers responsible for

clearing away the filth in the

streets Widow Andrews fostered orphan

and lame children she was now looking

after a foundling child abandoned in the

[Music]

street the boy was named Lawrence

Dunston after the

parish John Dudley though poor enough

himself served as a collector of arms

for those even

poorer he lived with his wife Dorothy

and had taken on extra work as a parish

Constable to support his daughter

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Martha until recently William Penny had

been one of those receiving the charity

that Dudley collected

as a grav maker he'd found it hard to

keep all his

children now he was able to rent one

room with his wife and their two younger

Sons Edward and

John the parish paid for his eldest son

Joseph to be his

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Apprentice the senior Church Warden of

St Dunston in the west was Henry

Dorset he was the closest thing cocken

key Ali had to a

leader but before his election as a

church official he'd been as poor as

those he now looked after he'd taken

poor relief in hard

times now his job was to run things he

raised taxes and donations appointed the

constables who kept order and the rakers

who kept the streets clean and above all

he kept a detailed record of how every

penny of Parish money was spent

these accounts written in Henry dorset's

own hand are the basis for this

film one has enormous respect for the

church wardens who actually compile the

accounts that were used these are

literate individuals they're not always

Keen to have their job they're nominated

because they're literate

these are people who are looking after

if you like the the community's welfare

the material welfare they're recording

meticulous

detail to many people obviously they're

they're boring Clarks recording you know

how much a padlock cost and you know

another Shilling for the the barb wire

that that was keeping the fence together

but that's what life's made of those

little incremental sort of bits of

data from the these bold Parish accounts

we can piece together the stories of The

gales The Dudley and the

pennies we can discover what happened to

them and to many others who left no

other

Trace when the Great Plague struck

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winter

1664 London was

thriving immigration from the

countryside had swelled London's

population it had trebled in size in 60

years and was now home to half a million

people London was huge I doubt if you

could walk along I was going to say the

pavement but of course there weren't any

Pavements I doubt if you could push your

way along the street everybody pushing

and shoving and full of their own

business londoners had a reputation of

walking terribly fast and not giving way

to

anyone there were even more animals than

people

dirt was a fact of

[Applause]

life although Rikers worked hard to

clear away the filth the streets were

like

sewers disease was

everywhere one of the apothecaries in s

Dunston was Mr

drinkwater he treated venial disease

with the Moss from the skull of a dead

man

without antibiotics even small injuries

from cuts to rotting teeth could lead to

infection and even

death people were put up with great pain

in search of cures or

preventatives Mercury enemas were

advised to balance the

humors but the most feared disease of

all was

plague I think plague is so particularly

terrifying because it's so sudden it

strikes you almost

unannounced it's also frightening

because it strikes everybody it's

agonizingly painful and the image of the

disease which is after all called the

Black Death isn't it uh where it

transforms the body and anything which

makes the human body appear revolting or

ugly is particularly

fearful there had been no major epidemic

since 1646

but no one thought plague had gone

away londoners were very well informed

about what they died from the number of

deaths in London in the city together

with their causes were published each

week these were the bills of

mortality every Thursday morning the

bills were delivered to the Lord mayor's

office copies were sold around the town

for a penny a sheet

there was never any shortage of awful

ways to die but there was a special

place for the disease that frightened

them

most

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plague it was common knowledge that a

third of Europe had been wiped out

during the black death of 300 years

earlier cases were reported all the time

but major epidemics seemed only to hit

every 20 years it was now 19 years since

the last great

outbreak no one really knew what caused

it among the poor some believe the

disease was the direct result of

sin the first response would have been

the hand of God who's behind Providence

there's an intense sort of millennial

feel to the perod everything has meaning

punishment for not obeying one's father

not obeying one's husband the punishment

for not saying prayers in the right way

the punishment for evil thoughts for a

whole variety of religious

misdemeanor for those interested in

portance the Omens for 1665 weren't

good astrologers predicted the arrival

of a comet traditionally a harbinger of

Doom many londoners witnessed the

arrival of the fiery star on Christmas

Eve others searched for a more rational

explanation blaming physical contact

with contaminated people animals and

cloth Nathaniel Hodges was a physician

working at the Forefront of contemporary

medical

knowledge the plague first came into

this island by Contagion and was

imported to us from Holland in packs of

merchandise and it came thither from

Turkey in balls of cotton or silk which

is a strange preserver of the

pestilential

steams but physical contagion alone

couldn't explain the way it jumped from

one place to another and the speed with

which it

spread some medical opinion believed it

was carried in my Asma a corrupt a that

Rose from the rank bowels of the

Earth the belief is that if you have

piles of rotting rubbish or animal

excrement or any other form of Filth or

dirt or detritus that will create these

Vapors these miasmas these will be

inhaled by human beings and thus give

you

plague my Asma a most subtle peculiar

insinuating venomous deleterious

exhalation arising from the maturation

of the ferment of the feces of the Earth

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the winter of 1665 was very hard the

temps froze over for the second year in

row Dr Hodges noted there were no cases

of plague while the weather was so

cold then with the spring thorw in April

a single case was recorded in Covent

Garden just half a mile away from [ __ ]

and key alley

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the privy council did what they always

did ordered the infected house to be

shut up the healthy imprisoned with the

sick the door marked with a red

cross it didn't

work the next week two more cases were

reported

in ccken key allei loose persons and

vagrants from infected Covent Garden

were sent

packing there was no panic yet only two

deaths and those not even in the parish

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but one man was more cautious he'd seen

it all

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before church Warden Henry Dorset had

survived the last major London

epidemic he knew at firsthand what

plague could do to a person and an

epidemic could do to a city

3rd of October

1646 given to Henry Dorset and F Lane

being visited with the sickness to

relieve him and his family out of the

money given by the Lord myr for that

purpose 10 Shillings

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early may still no plague in St

Dunston but if the people weren't

worried yet the authorities were getting

[Applause]

nervous the plague is is not really a

medical problem for government and for

civic officers it's a problem of order

controlling the the sort of areas of

sociability playhouse houses pubs to

make sure that the healthy and the

unhealthy didn't

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mingle in an attempt to Halt the spread

of infection pubs were closed

down the alley lost its Tavern and

William gurny the Publican lost part of

his

livelihood the animals that filled the

streets were the next to go

London is full of dogs and cats this is

long before the rspca or the Canan

Defense League can NE to your pet and

there is a hierarchy of dogs just as

there's a hierarchy of humans at the top

you have the Greyhounds the sporting

dogs the ladi's dogs the butcher dogs

the farmers dogs and then you have the

curs the muts and these are Vermin

they're rather like the sick poor lying

in the gutter and they are literally to

be exterminated and a rational for this

is of course that the seeds of disease

and the vapors of disease cling to their

mangy

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coats the Lord mayor and the city

orderman ordered a wholesale Massacre of

dogs and

cats dog killers employed by the parish

were paid tant a

corpse the Chamberlain of the city of

London made one payment for the killing

of nearly 5,000 th
dogs it is impossible to say how many

were killed contemporaries calculated

that 40,000 dogs were destroyed and

twice as many

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cats but it was an ill-fated measure

unwittingly ensuring the plague would

spread faster and faster

it's ironic that all these animals are

being exterminated when in fact they

would be able to kill the rats which are

spreading the

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disease in May the Lord mayor told every

Parish priests to issue the plague

orders these instructed all parishioners

what they were to do if or when the

plague

arrived the orders were Stark and

uncompromising the response of Civic

government and of the national

government if you like was kneejerk it

responded by issuing the book of orders

like it had in every other single plague

outbreak going back to the 16th century

and the policy was pretty standard if

there's an illness lock the people up

quarantine 40 days put a padlock on the

door possibly give them a little bit of

care in the form of a nurse or Food

Supplies the master of every house as

soon as anyone in his house complain

Earth shall give knowledge thereof

within 2 hours after the said sign shall

appear the house wherein he inhabiteth

shall be shut out for certain

days none be removed out of the house

where he falleth

sick that every house visited be marked

with a Red Cross of a foot long

that the Constable see every house shut

up and be attended with

Watchmen the nurses The Watchmen The

Searchers those who went into the houses

of the Dead to establish whether it was

plague that had killed them someone in

every Parish would have to do these

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jobs everyone knew they were

dangerous everyone knew it was the poor

who would end up doing them

but in [ __ ] and key alley some still

hoped the outbreak wouldn't get any

worse that it wouldn't come into their

Parish that life would go

on they were

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wrong on the 23rd of May the plague

claimed its first victim in s

Dunston's Dorothy chesington was 12

years old

William peny dug her

grave her funeral was conducted in the

usual formal

way burial is very important to

londoners I mean it sometimes seems

surprising to us that with death so

present with everybody experiencing lots

of deaths in the family that they pay

quite so much attention to people being

buried properly in a place that seems

appropriate with the right kind of

service and the right kind of attendance

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the spring weather grew hotter and

hotter with temperatures reaching 70°

F the plague billus thrives in such

conditions plague cases erupted

throughout the

city red crosses began to appear in the

wealthier districts

the rich

fled well the wealthy and the welltoo

left first of all the court goes and

then the Gentry even the people from

sort of the middling sections of society

if they' got somewhere to go they

left and the Physicians went because

they said that they had to go with their

clients who of course were the wealthy

and a number of the parish clergy also

left and that was really thought to be

improper

the sense of betrayal at the departure

of clergy and of Physicians but

particularly of preachers must have been

tremendous because here were people who

were supposed to intervene with God and

they are abandoning their

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flocks I suppose the difficulty is that

the rich despise the poor the poor are

not only poor and and you the very B

scum the froth that they're also

carriers of disease they're carriers of

scene so I suppose one of the problems

one of the experiences for the rich and

we can see it a little bit in some of

the letters of people like Peeps and

others is that the thing you have to do

is avoid the poor

of course if you're wealthy you can get

out you've probably got enough income or

a relative in the country you may even

have a second home so you can flee if

you're one of the residents of cocken

key allei there's very little you can do

how will you live where will you go um

if you flee London and end up in a a

Paris in Su or in middlex many of those

localities will not want to receive the

poor margin or vagrant because they'll

have to feed them

everyone who wanted to leave needed a

certificate of Health to pass through

City

boundaries Ali residents John and

Elizabeth Davis were granted special

dispensation to

leave Mrs Davis the wife of Mr John

Davis one of the Paris tenants came and

desired that they were to go into the

country the Times Hard by reason of the

sickness then increasing that this vest

would play to Abate them this quarter's

rant why they were so lucky is not

recorded no other family was allowed to

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leave some of the rich stayed on a few

noblemen the Archbishop of Canterbury

and the bishop of London all determined

to stick it

out Sir John Lawrence the Lord mayor of

London also decided to stay but not

without taking

precautions the Venetian Ambassador

reported that the mayor had built an

elaborate Contraption in which he

conducted all his business hoping it

would protect him from infected

visitors but government seemed paralyzed

Beyond issuing the plague orders little

was

done there is in one sense an abdication

of responsibility by the elites during

Great Plague we can see these small

communities turning to their own

resources to make a living to get by and

certainly if if we reflect on

contemporary stuff I would hate to think

the sort of social catastrophe that

would take place in 20th century

sophisticated culture if a quarter of

the London population went down with

some mysterious disease in the space of

months by the summer London was a

different place some 200,000 people had

fled most of them of the better

sort those who remained were

overwhelmingly poor increasingly

frightened and left to look after

themselves they were as one chronicler

described them the human fuel for an

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epidemic by early June though there was

still no plague in the alley everyone

was Tak taking

precautions Tradesmen would no longer

handle money

directly letters were aired over boiling

vinegar before being

opened and families began to police

themselves searching their bodies for

The Telltale plague

tokens the signs were

unmistakable dark swellings in the neck

the groin or the

armpits the classical sign of bubonic

play is the bubo and the bubo develops

in a lymph gland that becomes colonized

by the

bacteria and swells in response to that

infection and the bubo can reach the

size of a hen's egg it's often in the

groin or under the armpit and it can be

exquisitely tender and very

painful there is also a pneumonic

version of the plague that attacks the

lungs it spread by coughs and sneezing

and is the unexpectedly Grizzly

inspiration for the famous

[Music]

rhyme the nursery rhyme ringer ringer

roses tells the story of pneumonic

plague in a nursery rhyme form so uh the

Ring of roses refers to the purplish

colored rash that develops on just under

the skin after the development of

plague the a tissue a tissue refers to

the spread of the infection by coughing

and sneezing and the line We All Fall

Down refers to the individual literally

falling down and

dying it was only in the 19th century

that the real source of the plague was

identified

in the

1660s no one would have thought to look

for it in something as insignificant or

as common as the bite of the

flea the way in which plague is

transmitted from the rodent host to man

is VI the flea flea feeds on the

infected rodent and the blood me

containing the

bacteria become in meshed in a clot of

blood within the flea stomach now at

that stage the flea can't digest the

meal and when it subsequently feeds on

another host whether that be another

rodent or whether it be man it actually

regurgitates that blood meal containing

the bacteria back into the host so they

the bacteria are effectively injected

just under the skin

on the 15th of June it finally

happened plague arrived in [ __ ] and key

alley the victim was the Widow Rebecca

Andrews who cared for the foundling

children of the

parish but that didn't stop the plague

orders being enforced against her she

was shut up in her

house and the child Lawrence Dunston was

locked inside with her

[Music]

[Applause]

paid to John Gil the Smith for hasps

Hooks and a padlock and fitting them on

three Shillings and

TPP to make sure that neither Widow

Andrews nor the boy Lawrence Dunston

escaped John Dudley was appointed as

Watchman he held the key to the padlock

which secured the infected house

one of the responses by Civic officials

was to have watchers and warders posted

in in key areas like the corner Fleet

Street in cck and key allei to make sure

nothing Underwood was happening so it's

probably a little paranoid to say but we

can think of a society that really is

dominated by surveillance Everybody is

watching everybody else

[Music]

although they were locked up Lawrence

Dunston and Widow Andrews weren't

entirely

abandoned the parish provided food drink

and some basic Medical

Care Sarah leer was one of three nurses

caring for the alleys sick and

dying the plague orders allowed only one

other group to enter infected houses The

Searchers once someone had died it was

their job to confirm it was plague that

had killed

them Widow Briggs and Widow Manton were

given the job in cocken key alley their

contact with the dead isolated them from

other people

people 3rd July it was ordered that

Widow Briggs one of the Searchers of

deceased people shall henceforth cohabit

and dwell with Widow Manon the other

Searcher it was they who entered Widow

Andrew's house and found her dead of

plague

the boy was still

alive he was left locked in the house

[Music]

[Music]

the next day Lawrence Dunston too had

[Music]

died when there was no one to inherit

them the victim's belongings were taken

by Brokers of the

Dead profits made by their sale were

paid back to the parish

the money received was carefully noted

by the church Warden it was used to pay

apothecaries and nurses for the care of

those who had

nothing Widow Andrew's few assets were

soon used

up dispersed for the Widow by the order

of Mr drinkwater

Apothecary a quart of sack one and

six for sorl

toin for bread nail

[Music]

six for the searches 2

Shillings for the bearer to drink one

shilling for a coffin one

shilling for the grav maker on shilling

[Music]

preventatives intended to ward off the

plague were everywhere the Royal College

of Physicians printed a list of recipes

that were thought to do the job one set

for the rich one for the

poor one recipe for the richest sort

called for 4 and 20 G of unicorn's

horn another prescribed three grams of

linum that's opium dissolved in brandy

the poor had to make do with cheaper

Solutions arsenic amulets worn on the

chest or under the armpit were

[Music]

popular Thomas deer when he's describing

the Great Plague of 16003 notes that Ros

goes up in price from a shilling for a

huge armful to six shillings for a tiny

little Bunch because people were so

anxious to be able to go around holding

it to their noses uh this is why you

have a pomander when you go out into the

streets or smoke tobacco and tobacco is

is considered an absolutely Ace

prophylactic either to chew as Samuel

peeps did or to smoke U because that

drives away the miasmas

even children were encouraged to smoke

and boys had eaten were flogged for

refusing children were also given the

alcohol and opium based

[Music]

bruise if you're wealthy you drink

finding wines a good madira will help

you presumably get very drunk but Stave

off the sort of pain and I think we want

to remember that there is huge pain if

you're suffering of the plague you're in

massive massive pain it's a nasty nasty

way to

die but nothing had any

effect in ccken K Al by late June six

had died Widow Rebecca and

Lawrence Dunston Anne Bradshaw Daniel

Jackson Peter Ray and Roger

Charles on the 28th of June William peny

and his family went through the daily

ritual of checking for the tokens

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

you

[Music]

finding the sign he knew it wasn't just

his own fate that had been sealed his

whole family would now be locked into

their house alongside him cting

death only Joseph his eldest son was

left

outside someone now had to dig the

parish's graves

whereas it appeared that the house which

William peny lived in in Ken ke alley in

this Parish was visited and shut up with

the sickness he the said Penny being

grav maker it was ordered that he be

forth with discharged and that Joseph

Penny his son be

[Music]

gravemaker m

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

children were more vulnerable than

adults on the 19th of July after 3 weeks

locked in their house the youngest Penny

boys died John was 12 Edward was 8

as their families died around them

London's poor were left to cope

[Music]

alone it was not until 3 months later

that the House of Lords safe in Oxford

finally debated the plague

they came up with two

proposals that no member of the Lords

should be shut up in their

house and that no plague Hospital be

built as they said near to persons of

note and quality

[Music]

the summer of 1665 was unbearably hot

the plague raged hotter

still throughout August the death toll

doubled and doubled

again in cocken Kali six houses were now

shut
up but the misery of those locked in put

money in the pockets of those left

outside Joseph Britain and Robert Phelps

received 8 Shillings a week as

Watchman paid by the burial Joseph peny

was earning more than his father had

ever

done but he couldn't see his parents

still alive but still shut inside their

infected

House John was also earning 8 Shillings

a week but in the second week of August

he took time off and brought home only a

shilling that week his daughter Martha

had died though not of the

plague but no one in the alley earned

more than John Gail the blacksmith and

chief enforcer of the locking up

order 17th August paid Mr Gail the Smith

for a lock conf fitting it upon Mr bird

whistle door one shilling and

8 neighbors imprisoned

neighbors Robert Phelps The Watchman

helped John Gail lock in Thomas bird

whistle and his

family The gales and the bird whistles

had lived opposite one another for years

until recently when historians looked at

these local Parish records we didn't see

that the people doing the locking up

doing the watching acting as the

constables enforcing the authorities

ways of controlling the plague are their

very neighbors people who are in the

same social and economic condition as

them people who they meet in their Al

housee people who they meet and talk to

in the street every every

[Music]

day but the business of locking up

exposed people to

Danger 3 weeks after locking up the bird

whistles Gail the Smith was himself

visited with the

plague bird whistle died 4 weeks after

he he was shut

up there's no burial record for John

Gale we do know that 20 days after he

was locked in his whole family was

infected contempories knew that blocking

the healthy in with the sick often

signed their death warrant and some

thought the policy had made things

worse this shutting up would breed a

plague if there were none infection may

have killed its thousands but shutting

upath killed its 10,

thousands earlier in the year when the

first house was shut up in Covent Garden

neighbors had forced open the door to

free those

inside but this was the only show of

descent on record few seemed to have

fought

[Music]

incarceration it was an amazing

selfcontrol amazing sort of dignity in

these communities one could imagine

today if you know 20% of urban London

population died in the space of three to

4 months this town would be a ruin there

would be Riot and God knows what but in

early modern London these were sort of

self-disciplined um individuals who who

struggled and Made

Alive there was an alternative to the

shutting up

policy plague victims could be taken to

pest houses hospitals which effectively

isolated the sick removing them from

contact with the

healthy but in London this was rarely

done only five pest houses were built

all outside the city

walls one in mariban Village despite the

protests of those living there another

in Soho's golden Square

the city had acquired land for three

more pest houses but they were never

[Music]

built pest houses were isolation

hospitals where the victims or suspected

victims of plague would taken but the

capacity in the London pest houses was

really quite small there was

accommodation for about 600 Which is

less than 1% of those who died from

plague in

1665 and that compares with some um

Continental towns such as Amsterdam

Milan Genoa where there was room for

hundreds in individual pest

house I say in the continent they have

much stricter mechanisms much earlier on

um they have a much more sophisticated

system of plague hospitals for example

uh where people are transported quite

early on in the outbreaks of the disease

now in London that's not done so much

the facilities aren't

available no records survive from

London's pest houses making it

impossible now to judge their

effectiveness as places of cure or

care but it seems likely that isolating

the sick did reduce the number of

healthy people exposed to

infection more pest houses and less

locking up might just have reduced the

death

toll as it was unsupported by government

London's pest houses had a fearsome

reputation most doctors having fled pest

houses were staffed by

nurses drawn from the poorest women they

needed no

qualifications except that of being

prepared to do a dangerous

job Lancing the buos was thought to

relieve the

suffering but far from being praised for

taking on such life-threatening work the

nurses were blamed for the icious spread

of the

disease these wretches out of greediness

to plunder the dead would strangle their

patience and charge it to the distemper

in their

throats others would secretly convey the

pestilential taint from the sores of the

infected to those who are

[Music]

well the kinds of professional

middleclass men who wrote narratives of

the plague seem to imply that the nurses

were grasping vicious

untrustworthy um Wicked dangerous

extremely

unpleasant but it's very difficult to

separate this rhetoric from the reality

of what it would have been like to be an

older poorer destitute woman trying to

make a living in the most appalling

human catastrophe that anybody could

experience and they attributed to the

nurses a lot of the that they had about

the epidemic and uh laid on their

shoulders some of the sense of social

disruption that clearly all londons at

that time

had even the nurses treating the victims

in their homes as Sarah Fletcher did in

the alley were accused of being little

better than

thieves the is it conceived how careless

most nurses are in attending the visited

and how careful they are are being

possessed with rooking avarice to watch

their opportunity to ransack the

houses it is something Beyond a plague

to be in the hands of those dirty ugly

UNH wholesome

hags this harsh judgment isn't supported

by the parish

records in ccken ke Al nurse Fletcher

had been caring for the sick for many

years poor as she was she was honest

enough to declare money she she'd found

in the home of a plague victim even

though it amounted to More Than A

month's

wages 27th of July received of nurse

Fletcher £1 and 8 Shillings which was

left in Goodman Short's trunk in cocken

key allei

[Music]

August

1665 the number of dead reached almost

7,000 a week each plague death marked by

the letter

P the totals were swelled by the deaths

not directly attributable to plague but

which nevertheless owed something to the

epidemic the numbers of people dying

from all causes rise during plague it

isn't just that you add plag onto a

normal total the normal totals greatly

enhanced and that must be partly because

there are undiagnosed plague deaths but

probably also because there are other

diseases that are running at the same

time there are certainly some that seem

to be quite similar to plague that lots

of deaths attributed to spotted fever

and so

on it was suspected at the time that the

official totals of plague dead were

actually underestimates of the true

picture

it is fear that the true number of dead

this week is near a

10,000 from the poor that cannot be

taken notice of through the greatness of

the

number and as all the Figures were

collected by the church they did not

include any Jews Quakers or other

denominations every day Searchers made a

sweep of the alley for plague

deaths they did their best to report all

the ones they knew about but many deaths

were deliberately hidden perhaps to

prevent the locking up of the victim's

family the bills often conceal plague

deaths so the figures may have been much

higher than those actually recorded

after all if you have plague in your

community you're not going to advertise

the fact to the world unless you can

help it

many cases only came to light when the

infected were forced to call for

help some turned to apothecaries who

unlike many doctors were still prepared

to venture into plague infested streets

but not without

protection this Eerie outfit was

designed to ward off

infection the mask and coat were thickly

waxed leather the strange beak contained

strong smelling herbs to prevent

inhaling the contagious my

Asma the treatments they brought with

them were even

stranger William bogur described his

attempts to siphon out the evil from

within the body

vest writes about having a a Mastiff at

the breast of a woman in order to

protect her against the plague and this

must seem to USS to be one of the

wildest and weirdest ideas about disease

but in fact it's air to a long medieval

tradition which is that you apply an

animal to uh one of your lower

extremities usually often a decapitated

pigeon or [ __ ] and that sucks out the

corrupt humors from your body body

through the paes and makes you fit so

there is a logic behind it orbe it one

we would find rather

bizarre another method recommended by

the Royal College of Physicians was to

try to burn out the

bubo to break the tumor take a great

onion Hollow it put into it a fig R cut

small a dram of Venice treal put it

close stopped in a wet paper and roast

it in in the

Embers apply it hot under the

TU nothing seemed to work in William

gurn's family all had now died except

his wife

Anne [ __ ] and kealii had buried 16 of

whom seven were

children the Apothecary William buur

described the futility of his daily

efforts to save

lives I commonly dressed 40 SS in a

Day held their pulses sweating in the

bed half a quarter of an

hour I let one

blood commonly suffered their breathing

in my face several times when they were

dying and then helped to lay them out in

the

coffin and last of all accompanying them

to the Grave

[Music]

hundreds were now dying every

day thousands were shut up waiting to

die church bells were were rang for

every

death the bells were horse with

tolling and then a small Act of

Mercy on the 12th of August the Lord

mayor issued a

proclamation for one night the healthy

were put under curfew and the imprisoned

were

released my Lord mayor commands people

to be within at 9 at night

that the sick may have Liberty to go

abroad for

air the dying and those shut in with

them were the only ones allowed out in

the

streets Joseph peny had not seen his

parents since he had buried his two

younger brothers 23 days before

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

September

1665 the city now lay

silent no Bells rang for the

dead there die so many that the Bell

would hardly ever leave ringing and so

they ring not at

all on the exchange where just about

everything was bought and sold trade had

all but disappeared

in the deserted streets people were

prepared to believe anything that

offered

hope it was rumored that syphilis gave

immunity from the

plague of all the common Hackney

prostitutes and many others of the Rouge

route there are but few missing

verifying that the plague left the

rotten bodies and took the

sound a few people have this idea that

if you get yourself infected with

syphilis or the pox that will prevent

you from being infected by plague and

the rationale behind this is quite

logical you use one poison to drive out

another

poison I think the legacy of the interma

the world turned upside down would have

meant that some people responded to this

sort of catastrophe by saying well you

know stuff it this is the end of the

world and if you're a poor person and

you've got to spend all day you know

chucking dead bodies into a graveyard I

imagine at the end of the day you

probably want a bit of a drink and a

smoke and you may not get out of bed too

early in the

morning the rituals of life began to

break down the church warden in the

neighboring Parish made a horrifying

Discovery behind his

church paid to the coroner and expended

when he sat about the child found dead

thrown over the wall into each

yard it's very dramatic when you read

through the parish registers and the way

in which they shift from naming the dead

to saying two bodies three bodies a man

who died in the street it gives you a

very good a very frightening feeling

about what it was like to be alive in

London at that

moment the dead became

nameless paid for the two children 5

Shillings paid for burying the boy 5

Shillings paid for burying the girl at

that

house three

Shillings the bodies piled up faster

than they could be

[Music]

buried one of the consequences of the

fact that London is so crammed is that

church yards can't get any bigger and

loads of barrial are happening in a very

small space

and here in the churchyard of St ola's

we can see how high the burial ground

has risen above the level of the church

so that when I'm standing in the church

porchway here the burial ground is about

up to

here the epidemic was the worst that

anyone could remember at this rate the

whole of London would be dead by

Christmas then in September a cause for

Hope a possible preventative emerged

fumigation James Angier who is a

celebrated Authority on fumigation he

persuades the privy Council to let him

have an experiment in high hobin where

he burns quantities of salt peter

Brimstone and Amber and I think the

stench must have been so astonishing

that any Rat with a vestage of of sense

mechanism in its body would have fled

and I think that kind of treatment May

well have

worked hearing positive reports of On's

methods the king ordered fumigation to

be tried on a vast

scale every six houses on each side of

the way are to join together to provide

one great fire before the door of the

middlemost

inhabitant it was a Monumental

undertaking involving the whole

city hundreds of cauldrons of coal were

bought at Great
expense all over London plague was to be

smoked out once and for

[Music]

all great fires burning aromatic incense

blazed across the

city there was at last a reason to

believe that the disease could be

defeated kid

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

but cruy the weather

changed after the fires had burned for 3

days the rain

came the fires were

[Music]

[Music]

extinguished the next night more than

4,000

died so many were dying that it was now

impossible to keep track

Joseph Penny's Father William died

without any burial record

[Music]

[Music]

a man who had spent his life giving

others a decent burial was carried away

on a cart to be disposed of in a common

pit they take these dead carts through

often very narrow streets and they have

either slings or boards that they go

into the house and bring people out it's

probably one of the most ghastly

thoughts in the world of of these of

people going down crying out bring out

your dad so you really never know where

your dear dear departed relative friend

lover where they were going to end up

and you were not allowed out of that

house so off they went in a dead cart to

who knew who knows where

before the plague the Parish of St

Dunston had a population of about

3,000 in the 6 weeks at the height of

the plague Joseph peny buried 500 of his

fellow parishioners in seven

pits 16th of August four pits 1st of

September two pits fourth of September

Joseph Penny paid for planks to cover

the pits that the visited poor were bu

in

there are no markings today to show

where London's plague pits

were the mass Graves were dug and filled

so fast there was no time to place

memorials Rector John gear ordered a

plague pit D in Covent Garden for £49

Shillings it took 60 M days to

dig the rect looked into it and prayed

it would be the

last it was the first of

five the plague was killing faster than

the corpses could be

buried London suffered the noisome

stench arising from the great number of

the

[Music]

Dead the broadgate development um which

uh you know is on the Northern Fringe of

the city of London is on a site uh which

was called the new churchard in the

early modern period it was founded in

1569 to take plague burials it was used

in every successive plague and indeed in

all the intervening years uh and

certainly a lot of people were being

buried there every time there's been

excavation on that site both when they

put through Broad Street the overground

railway line when they dug the

underground and when they demolished the

station in order to build broadgate

itself they found large numbers of

bodies

[Music]

[Music]

in October Joseph Penny

[Music]

died the shovels and basket that were

the tools of the Grave Maker's trade

were returned to his mother

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

the plague faded as fast as it had

begun winter was

approaching the cold was killing the

plague

basilis with the first frosts the worst

seemed to be

over many of those who had left now

returned to to the

city John and Elizabeth Davis came back

to the alley where they helped nurse the

sick paid John Davis for keeping of

Elizabeth Phelps who died of the

visitation but some of the refugees

returned too

quickly those who had survived the worst

of the epidemic seem to have acquired

some immunity to the

disease those who returned had none and

presented the plague with a new

opportunity the number of deaths rose

again in

December the city feared the disease

would never relinquish its

grip but it proved to be a false

alarm there were fewer and fewer cases

as winter set

in it was soon safe enough for

Parliament to

return the Lord mayor gave up his

elaborate glass case

by February when the king returned

people knew the epidemic was

[Music]

over white crosses were painted over red

to show that a house had been free of

infection for 40

days people emerged into the streets

again all had suffered but the poor most

of all

the editor of the only London newspaper

of the time

reported I do not find this visitation

to have taken away in or about the city

any person of prime Authority and

[Music]

command for the people of ccken key

allei 1665 was a year from which they

would never

[Music]

recover 12 of the 20 houses were

Afflicted with
plague 11 of the 12 were shut

up over half the people living there

died the Street's final death toll was

36 men women and children

[Music]

in many

houses half the family is swept

away and in some the whole from the

eldest to the

youngest few escape with the death of

but one or

two never did so many husbands and wives

die

together never did so many parents carry

their children with them to the Grave

[Music]

at the end of

1665 the only member of the penny family

still alive was

Elizabeth she'd lost her Three Sons and

her

husband she could not carry on the

Family Trade of grave

digging the parish did what they could

for

[Music]

her Henry Dorset the church Warden

brought back the tools of the gravem

Maker's trade

three shovels in a basket four Shillings

and four p

[Music]

[Music]

for