page_title: Great Plague of London
section_title: London in 1665
hierarchical_section_title: Great Plague of London / London in 1665
caption_attribution_description: English: The earliest proper map (as opposed to panorama) of London known. Attributed to Ralph Agas, and probably surveyed between 1570 and 1605. The original was 6 foot 0.5 inches long by 2 feet 4.5 inches wide. This much reduced image is a scan of a copy of a lithograph of a copy, was itself badly repaired with sellotape and has had to be "restored"; so is hardly a truly faithful representation of the original, but few good copies exist and no other detailed public domain images are known.
context_page_description: The Great Plague, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which originated from Central Asia in 1331, the first year of the Black Death, an outbreak which included other forms such as pneumonic plague, and lasted until 1750.
  The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18
  months. The plague was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected rat flea.
  The 1665–66 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic; it was remembered afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400-year Second Pandemic.
context_section_description: As in other European cities of the period, the plague was endemic in 17th-century London. The disease periodically erupted into massive epidemics. There were 30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636, as well as smaller numbers in other years.
  In late 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. In the poorer parts of the city, hygiene was impossible to maintain in the overcrowded tenements and garrets. There was no sanitation, and open drains flowed along the centre of winding streets. The cobbles were slippery with animal dung, rubbish 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.
  Some of the city's necessities such as coal arrived by barge, but most came by road. Carts, carriages, horses and pedestrians were crowded together and the gateways in the wall formed bottlenecks through which it was difficult to progress. The nineteen-arch London Bridge was even more congested. The better-off used hackney carriages and sedan chairs to get to their destinations without getting filthy. The poor walked, and might be splashed by the wheeled vehicles and drenched by slops being thrown out and water falling from the overhanging roofs. Another hazard was the choking black smoke belching forth from factories which made soap, from breweries and iron smelters and from about 15,000 houses burning coal.
  Outside the city walls, suburbs had sprung up providing homes for the craftsmen and tradespeople who flocked to the already overcrowded city. These were shanty towns with wooden shacks and no sanitation. The government had tried to control this development but had failed and over a quarter of a million people lived here. Other immigrants had taken over fine town houses, vacated by Royalists who had fled the country during the Commonwealth, converting them into tenements with different families in every room. These properties were soon vandalised and became rat-infested slums.
  The administration of the City of London was organised by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and common councillors, but not all of the inhabited area generally comprising London was legally part of the City. Both inside the City and outside its boundaries there were also Liberties, which were areas of varying sizes which historically had been granted rights to self-government. Many had been associated with religious institutions, and when these were abolished in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their historic rights were transferred along with their property to new owners. The walled City was surrounded by a ring of Liberties which had come under its authority, called 'the City and Liberties', but these were surrounded by further suburbs with varying administrations. Westminster was an independent town with its own liberties, joined to London by urban development. The Tower of London was an independent liberty, as were others. Areas north of the river not part of one of these administrations came under the authority of the county of Middlesex, and south of the river under Surrey.
  At that time, bubonic plague was a much feared disease but its cause was not understood. The credulous blamed emanations from the earth, "pestilential effluviums", unusual weather, sickness in livestock, abnormal behaviour of animals or an increase in the numbers of moles, frogs, mice or flies. It was not until 1894 that the identification by Alexandre
caption: The "Woodcut" map of London, dating from the 1560s
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