WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM 1665 SCOURGE...
THE bubonic plague had been around for centuries. It turned the victim’s skin black in patches and produced bloody boils the size of golf balls. The last big outbreak arrived in London late in 1664 on ships carrying cotton from Amsterdam and in Ipswich on packet boats from Rotterdam. While it was once thought the plague was spread by fleas on rats, recent research suggests it was actually spread by human fleas and body lice – it escalated too quickly to have gone through the third party of rats.
At its peak in September 1665, it’s known to have killed 100,000 in London – a quarter of the city’s population. But it actually killed many more as victims were often not recorded. Dead bodies were collected at night and thrown into “plague pits”. But soon there were too many bodies and too few drivers so they were just stacked up against walls outside houses.
Those suspected of having it were ordered to be shut up in their house while “pest- houses” were built – isolation hospitals where the sick could be cared for or stay until their death.
It was thought cats and dogs were responsible so the mayor of London tried to eliminate them. Around 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats died for no reason.
SHOPS closed. Travel banned. Residents on lockdown. While that sounds all too familiar today, it was actually Britain during the Great Plague of 1665- 66.
A new Channel 5 threeparter is looking back at that epidemic to see what we can learn from it. And as medic Xand van Tulleken, archaeologist Raksha Dave
The authorities lit bonfires believing they would purify the air. Smoking was encouraged to avoid infection – even children were told to light up. Traders shut up shops and fled London. Later, people had to get a certificate of health to leave the capital. But fearful communities outside the city often turned Londoners away, leaving them to become refugees.
The word “quarantine” is derived from the Italian “quaranta giorni”, which means 40 days – the length ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to wait before landing. The plague reached Eyam, Derbys, via a delivery of flea– infested cloth from London and the village put itself into quarantine to prevent it spreading to Sheffield. Of a population of 350, 260 died, but Sheffield remained plague– free. Wacky remedies thought to help prevent or cure it included “pigeon slippers” – slitting open a bird and wearing it on your feet – leech blood- letting and bathing in your own urine. Another “cure” involved cutting open the sores and smearing with tree resin, flower roots and human excrement. While it was previously thought the Great Fire of London of 1666 wiped it out, it’s now reckoned cases just subsided as the weather turned colder.