The New Murrey and Blue blog

Reblogged from A Medieval Potpourri @sparkypus.com

‘May 29th 1666.  Spent on the City Marshall at ye shutting up of a visited house . . Is.0d.’

Plague had always stalked England throughout the centuries with regular outbreaks such as the one known as the Black Death in the 14th century which brought death on such a scale that whole villages were so absolutely decimated hundreds of them were abandoned –  the few survivors, if any,  moving away perhaps reduced to beggarhood.    But probably the outbreak that springs to mind for most of us is that of 1665 which became known as The Great Plague.  The plague had been hovering about for the previous 30 years with some serious outbreaks such as the one in 1647 when 3,597 souls succumbed to it.  Prior to that in 1603 there had been 33,347 deaths which led to the weekly publication of the  Bills of Mortality.  It probably never entirely left –  trapped in the rancid, fetid alleys formed by the overhanging roofs of the timber framed houses that seem so picturesque to us nowadays.  The light and fresh air could not permeate those dark, dank  places that were often ankle deep in mud – and a lot worse besides –  nothing more than open sewers dotted here and there with equally malodorous laystalls where dung, rotting animal carcasses and general refuse were deposited.   Lord Macauley noted ‘The drainage was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents. Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill, bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood was profusely thrown to right and left by coaches and carts. To keep as far from the carriage road as possible was therefore the wish of every pedestrian. The mild and timid gave the wall. The bold and athletic took it.  If two roisterers met, they cocked their hats in each other’s faces, and pushed each other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If he was a mere bully he sneaked off, muttering that he should find a time,  If he was pugnacious the encounter probably ended in a duel behind Montague House'(1). 

However the heavy frosts of the unusually severe winter of 1664 and the beginning of 1665 perhaps held the pestilence at bay for a while until the frost finally broke in March when the first deaths appeared in St-Giles-in-the-Fields which lay just outside the city wall as well as Westminster where several members from the same family are recorded as all dying suddenly from it.   Plague had arrived (2).

To continue reading click here.