The Harrowing Eye-Witness Accounts Of The Great Plague | Fire & Fever | Chronicle

for who can express the calamities of the Great Plague of 1665? The entire British nation cried for the miseries of its metropolis. In some houses, corpses lay awaiting burial and in others, people in their final agonies in one room and dying moans could be heard in another. delirious delusions and family and friends mourning both their loss and the grim prospect of their own sudden departure. Death was a sure wife for all children and babies who passed immediately from the womb to the Grave and who would not burst with pain at the sight of the lineage. of a future generation hanging from the breasts of a dead mother or the marital bed transformed the first night into a Seiler and the unhappy couple found death in their first Embraces when the city was then burned without distinction, in the same way this

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does not spared ordering age or sex the terrible epidemic that history remembers as the Great Plague of London claimed its first victim in the freezing December of 1664, deaths from the feared disease were not in themselves unusual in the mid-17th century, since each year there were some unfortunate individuals succumbing, so these new deaths probably provoked little comment.

However, as the weeks and months that heralded the warm spring of 1665 passed, the population's worst fears were confirmed. The

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had arrived with a vengeance. The last major outbreak had brought death and misery to London. As long ago as 1625, during which more than 40,000 people had died, the short life expectancy of the average man or woman at the time meant that few people would remember the last epidemic. Memories of its horror though were kept eerily alive thanks to the colorful storytelling and rich folklore. Today, it is not difficult to understand the abject Terror that gripped the population as day by day more and more people fell prey to the terrible contagion.

London, of course, was a very different place in the 17th century to the enormous Metropolis we know today. To begin with, this map is much smaller and indicates its boundaries at the time, which stretched from the River Temps in the south to Ludgate in the west and from Alers Gate in the north to the tower in the east. Also shown is the area of ​​housing built, including sites. like the Westminster Souk and the Strand areas north of the city, such as Islington and Clarenell, which today tremble with the thunder of modern traffic, were then peaceful villages surrounded by green bushes and Rolling Meadows.

There couldn't be more competition between these sleepy suburbs. and the boiling cauldron that was the center of London, by far the largest city in England. London in the mid-17th century was associated with perhaps a million people, sometimes four or five families crowded into a housing industry that dominated the area north of the temps. and it was here that the most unpleasant living conditions were found. Half-timbered houses packed closely together jutted out narrow, unlit cobbled streets that were filled daily with every imaginable type of rotting rubbish, there was no sanitation and the smell of open sewers mingled horribly with the stench.

From the acrid black smoke that came from the chimneys of soap boilers and brewers, rats and mice ran rampant, and the street gutters were channeled directly into the Temps River, the same place from which most people took out the water to drink and There had been suspicions for a long time, centuries in fact, that the disease was caused by rats, but no one had really nailed this down and it was not until the beginning of this century that the actual cycle of transmission. It was clearly discovered that the disease is transmitted by fleas, rat fleas, and they are the ones that actually bite man and transmit the bacteria to man.

Personal hygiene standards were, of course, extremely low. with their fashionable wigs were most of the time beveled by lice. No wonder then that illnesses and illnesses were so common because the importance of cleanliness in preventing illness was not understood, it was beyond comprehension even From learned men that microscopic germs and bacteria should be the cause of such miseries, devoid of any idea as to its cause, the common people saw the horror of the plague as a divine retribution for their earthly sins, people fearful of God, harassed by superstitions and sure of the truth of exploited old wives' tales.

Signs of the workings of the almighty take the appearance of a comet over London as a grim prediction of the disaster that will soon follow. Some even believe that the contagion is the work of those of other nations or religions who despised the Jews, the Roman Catholics, or In the Dutch, the predominant clinical feature here is that you get very large lymph nodes, in the groins and under the arms, in the armpit, which can vary in size from approximately one centimeter to 10 cm and, of course, accompany. that you have a high

fever

and the liver and spleen become enlarged and then rashes are common, some of these are hemorrhagic under the skin, and they turn quite black when Gang Green appears and of course that is why we, for The term Black Death actually arose if the causes of the plague remained a mystery to people, its results were too obvious and filled them with dread.

The

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r Samuel Peeps, whose writings left such a vivid picture of life in Stewart's period, clearly conveyed his feelings. While observing the outbreak of the plague on Thursday, June 7, in the strong heat of the afternoon, I remained walking in the garden until 12: on the night of this day I saw in Drury Lane two or three houses marked with a red cross and Lord have mercy on us WR there, this was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, according to my conception, I ever saw, it gave me a bad idea of ​​myself and my sense of smell, so I was forced to buy some rolled tobacco to smell and chew on Saturday June 17th struck me deeply this afternoon going with a hackney carriage from my Lord Treasurers to Hobin.

The coachman seemed to be driving slower and slower and at last he stood still, got out and could barely stand and told me that he was suddenly very sick and almost blind and couldn't see, so Al got in and got on. another carriage with a sad heart for the poor man and with problems for me for fear that he would fall with the plague. God have mercy on us all. Many doctors fled London. to avoid the plague, but some bravely remained, risking their lives in an attempt to apply their unfortunately limited knowledge to the cure of those afflicted.

Shown here is a plague doctor's uniform, a terrifying outfit that was supposed to protect the wearer against disease, the hat and gloves. They are made of leather and the horrible beak contains spices or perfumes. His dress is a waxed cloth and he carries a stick to scare people away. The arrival of this gruesome Vision may have done little to comfort the plague victim or his grieving family. There was little to do for the victim except the traditional practice of bloodletting, which involved opening a vein or applying leeches to the body. It was believed that this corrected the balance of the humors in the body, since four liquids were thought to be directly linked to the elements: black bile with earth, yellow bile with

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, phlegm with water and blood with air, leaving blood in cases of

great

anguish until the patient fainted, ordered by a doctor of the time, believing that this would restore the balance of the humors and the patient.

They began the road to recovery, various harmful potions were also recommended, powdered bones or puddings were administered. frog or snake on the affected parts of the body and, in an attempt to make the patient vomit, hermetics were supplied, of course, none of these cures had any effect on the progress of the disease and the desperate population soon resorted to ever increasing numbers

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est of quacks who were created with their cure all the medicines sold with huge profits for the heartless supplier. Dr. Nathaniel Hodges wrote, disgusted by the behavior, nothing contributed more to the common destruction than the practice of chemists and quacks and whose audacity and ignorance it is impossible to keep total silence, they were tireless in spreading their anecdotes and although equally oblivious to all knowledge as well as to physics, they threw into everyone's hands some rubbish or something else under the guise of a pompous title.

Surely there were no such evil impostors in any country because all events contradicted their claims and it was difficult for a person who trusted in their deceptions to escape. Their medicines were more fatal than the plague and increased the death toll. but these blowers of the pestilent flame were trapped in the common ruin and by their death excused to a certain extent the magistrates from suffering their practice. The terrible effect of the plague on the population was faithfully recorded in the mortality bills, as shown here, these depressing documents were published weekly and informed the people of exactly how their fellow citizens had been kidnapped and in what numbers.

From people with relative immunity the disease will not develop at all, but at the other extreme those who have no immunity. not at all, um, there will be a very high mortality rate, in fact, the overall mortality rate in this disease without treatment is something on the order of 50%. The figures attributed to deaths from the plague make grim reading in the week beginning September 19. 1665 7,165 people died from its effects the previous week they had seen it coming 6,978 then in that terrible September the plague swept with its greatest fury in the suffocating London before the implacable pestilence that the citizens of London tried to organize to protect those who still Los Unaffected officials and to assist those affected were appointed by William Lawrence, the mayor of London, to carry out various unpleasant tasks.

Examiners noted and marked with a red cross each house visited by the plague, while Watchers were posted outside day and night to avoid contact except with a doctor. Searchers and surgeons were employed to determine the cause of death, so that they were paid the princely sum of one gro for each corpse, while the corpse bearers traveled the streets in open carts to collect the numerous bodies from the houses for burial and once the cart was fully loaded with its grim cargo, would head to the outskirts of the city, to one of the pits of the Great Plague, then the bodies were quickly dumped and covered with a rapid climb, although the pit itself was not covered until it was completely full, neither family nor friends The dead were allowed to approach the plague pit before, during or after the burial of a body.

Daniel definitely in his famous Journal of a Plague Year described a plague pit in the subsequent plague outbreak in 1722, but the procedure had not changed much in 57 years. He wrote that the car had 16 or 17 bodies in it, some were wrapped in linen sheets, some in rugs and others were little more than naked or so loose that what was covering them fell off when the car was

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d and they fell naked among the bodies. Not that the matter mattered much to them or the indecency to anyone else because they were dead and would soon be piled up in the common grave of humanity, as we may call it, because no difference was made here except the rich and the poor. they went well together there was no other form of burial nor was it possible for there to be coffins because there were none for the prodigious numbers who fell into such a great calamity as this one in 1655 the dead carriage made its horrible journey through the streets of London night after night For more than 8 months the number of sacristans was not enough to bury the dead the bells looked like horses with a continuous ringing the support places did not retain the dead but they were thrown into large pits dug in vacant land in piles 30 or 40 together and it often happened that those who attended their friends' funerals one night were taken to the side of their long house, some of the infected ran staggering like drunks and fell and expired in the streets, others fell dead in the market. where they were purchasing the necessities for the sustenance of life, others lay half dead on Kos never to be awakened, but by the last trumpet some lay vomiting as if they had drunk poison, the Divine was taken in the very exercise of his priestly office to be registered. among the saints above and some doctors could not find help in their own antidotes but died when administering them to others many of their old age others in their prime slipped away under their cruelties of the female sex most died and hardly any children escaped and It was not It is rare to see an inheritance pass successively to three or four hirs in as many days, and in this we must not forget that the contagion spread to neighboring countries because the citizens who gathered in crowds in the adjacent cities carried the infection with them. where it devastated with equal fury sothat the plague that once crawled from street to street now reigned over whole counties leaving almost no place free from its insults such was the rise and such was the progress of this cruel Destroyer that began in London This calamity melts me to tears and The worst was still not certain, although the city was almost exhausted by his funerals because the disease had not yet subsided.

As the plague spread throughout 1665, the mayor issued new orders to clean up the filth. Teams of men were hired to exterminate the thousands of dogs and cats that roamed the streets and fed on the mounds of garbage. It is estimated that more than 60,000 dogs and cats were killed in this way during 1665. 1665 was a terrible year for young and old, rich and poor, and there are many good stories of immoral and evil behavior when disease refused to loosen its grip. above the population, some parents abandoned their sick children and took off people's clothes and bed linens as they lay dying.

It was also observed that dozens of sick people were deliberately trying to infect others by breathing in their faces and throwing plasters at them to cover their crying. SS Through the windows of the houses free of the plague, some official barriers could be seen stripping the corpses of their shrouds of linen if it seemed of good quality. It is certain that during 1665 London suffered not only the pestilence of disease but also of debauchery as the fabric of society was pushed to the limit. John Eelin, another contemporary

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r, recorded walking through the city from Kent Street to St James's, a depressing and dangerous passage. seeing so many coffins displayed in the streets and the streets full of people, the store closed and everyone sad. silence as if not knowing whose turn it is next ring ring roses the nursery rhyme probably um arose to describe the plague um but this would have been the pneumonic plague almost certainly because it talks about tissue tissue uh and this was this is a different form this is not It's not bubonic um so this was transmitted by um droplets when sneezing and so on, these very innocent words in the mouths of children refer to the red spots on the bodies of those who suffer from a form of plague from sweet aromatic herbs that were thought to cause They protected against the disease, until the sneezes that heralded the beginning of the infection and its conclusion, which saw literally thousands of people fall from December 1665, the Great Plague of London practically ended, from October of that year the number was steadily reduced Due in the first instance to the onset of colder weather, although the plague remained a threat for the next few years killing many people, never again in the 17th century did it strike with such severity that there were many reasons for its eventual decline. improvement of public sanitation. a greater awareness of personal hygiene, an advancement in medical expertise, and most importantly, the hideous black rat that carried disease across ships and into people's homes was driven out by the aggressive brown rat that inhabited In the Sewers and Fields, eventually high-risk shipping routes were diverted from The Great Dangerous Areas of the East and, as we will see later, many of the Infested Abominations that the people called home were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

There was a recurrence of the plague in Europe in the 19th century and that particular pandemic is still ongoing. burning we have fosi uh in various parts of the world still in Asia and Africa and in the Americas um so there are still strange outbreaks um happening the last um case in this country occurred in 1910 um so it is still with us In fact, it has a bacterial infection that still affects us in the spring of 1666. People crowded back into the city as hard as they had fled. The houses that were once so full of the dead were now inhabited by the living and the people left happily. about his marital affairs, trade and employment, some traces of the contagion remained which were easily conceived by the doctors and ended in a healthy recovery, the city returned to perfect health and a new city arose from the ashes of the old, much better able to resist.

Similar flames and on another occasion the Great Plague claimed approximately 110,000 people during 1665, between a quarter and a third of London's population. However, Dr. Nathaniel Hodge's choice of words were strangely prophetic, for before the summer of 1666 was over, a new threat had arrived. emerged from a small bakery on Pudding Lane to shake up the city again. This terrifying scene took place in the early hours of Sunday 2 September 1666 in a small bakery on Pudding Lane near East Chep in London the king's baker Thomas Farino with his daughter Hannah lived above the shop and was awakened by the frantic screams from a young bakery worker who found his escape downstairs sealed by the flames that had now taken over the entire building.

They were able to escape to an adjacent roof and were thus freed from the fury. Inferno, however, Faro's unfortunate servant was left completely paralyzed by fear and, despite Faro's desperate plea for her to follow them to the roof, died screaming in the Cauldron of smoke and flames, the poor girl having became the first victim of the Great Fire of London in the early hours. of the fire were vividly remembered by the ubiquitous Samuel Peeps, who kept his famous diary between 1660 and 1669. A Navy Board official who sometimes reported directly to King Charles II said that Peep's writings are rich in detail and flavor. of 17th century life.

At first he didn't care. About the fire, a feeling probably typical of most Londoners, it was only when the flames spread inexorably through the streets and streets of half-timbered houses that their bewilderment and sadness increased. On Sunday, September 2, Lord's Day, Jane called us around three in the morning. to tell us about a big fire they saw in the town, so Rose I put on my nightgown and went to her window and I thought it was at the back of Mark Lane at the end, as I wasn't used to such fires, I thought It was far enough.

I left and so I went to bed and fell asleep around 7 a.m. m. I got up again to get dressed and there I looked out the window and I saw the fire not as much as it was and beyond little by little Jane comes and she tells me that she hears that upstairs. 300 houses have been burned tonight by the fire that we saw and that was now burning the entire hill of Fish Street next to London Bridge, so I prepared myself at that moment and walked to the Tower and there I climbed on one of the places high and there I did it.

Seeing the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire and a huge endless fire on this and the other side and at the end of the bridge that, among other people, bothered me because of poor little Mitchell and our Sarah so depressed with a heart full of problems . to the lieutenant of the tower who tells me that it started this morning at the king's baker's house in Pudding Lane and that it has already burnt down St Magnus's church and most of Fish Street Hill, so I went down to the water side and there I got a boat over the bridge and saw a pitiful fire at poor Mitchell's house until old Swan was already burning like that and the fire advancing in a very short time reached the steel yard while I was there all trying to remove their goods and throw them into the river or put them on barges that send off the poor who stay in the houses until the fire touches them and then run to the boats or climb a couple of ladders from one side to the water to the other and among Other things that I perceive, the poor pigeons hated to leave their houses, but they fluttered around the windows and balconies until some of them burned their wings and fell.

That London would fall victim to a great fire had been the fear of the government and the kings for many centuries, already in 1189 a law had been passed ordering builders to build at least in part with brick and roof the houses with tiles or slate. ; Furthermore, in 1665 Charles II criminalized the construction of houses with wood, but in Stuart times such laws were never enforced, the high cost of these alternative materials meant that, despite orders and decrees, houses of the poor continued to be built with highly combustible wood, furthermore the only light and heat available to homeowners and industry were through naked flames, in fact a law had been passed just 4 years earlier requiring people to place a lit lantern in their windows during the winter months in the dark streets of the time.

This was the only way to provide lighting for centuries. Timber-framed dwellings and naked flames were an easy bedfellow in London. It was literally a tinder box waiting only for a deadly spark. The buildings were made of highly combustible materials. These. Very often the roofs were sometimes tiles or even thatch. And the first floor was kind of brick. usually wood and timber, which is small and covered with plaster, so if something caught fire there wouldn't be a real break, it could just burn and very often if you had a row of houses, very often the walls between each They were not solid, they were also made of acacia, so if a house caught fire at either end or in the middle, the fire could burn very, very quickly through the house.

The roads were also not as wide as they are today, but very often the houses stood out high and sometimes on some streets you could even shake the hand of the person in front because the buildings hung so much that the situation was aggravated by the Terrible summer drought which had left the water level extremely low, although piped water through wooden or lead pipes had eventually been made available to most of London's main streets the drought had almost dried up its sources the river the springs and the wells therefore there was little water for extinguishing fires, in fact, the first people to pipe water to London were the Romans and they used stone troughs, after the fall of the Roman Empire, we returned to our barbaric ways and then in later years a system of wooden tree trunks that were hollowed out and laid end to end, usually fed from the High Ground into the city to power the pumps from which the people got their domestic water .

These were mainly under the main roads and we think that is why we got the name Trunk Road because the trunk of the tree was under the main road. There were many other factors that helped the fire spread rapidly, as seen on this map, Pudding Lane, where the fire started, ran between T Street and Little East Jeep, and T Street in particular was made up almost entirely of warehouses filled with fuel, tar, brandy oil and sugar, as often happens when Misfortune The attacks of the elements conspired to aggravate the problem and the strong wind blowing from the east soon drove the flames down Temp Street and towards Fish Street Hill;

With each passing minute, the fire took a firmer hold on the city, becoming increasingly savage, even beyond the control of the Watcher who struggled to put it out, they were not helped in their efforts by the unfortunate attitude of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. He had seen many minor fires start in the city, none of which had caused more than superficial damage or caused any major concern to make matters worse. Bloodworth had enjoyed an excellent dinner the night before and washed it down with generous amounts of wine, so which especially displeased him to be disturbed early on Sunday in September with an urgent request to come and inspect another fire. no doubt, after much complaining and cursing, the reluctant mayor finally agreed to travel to Pudding Lane from his house in Aldergate to see the situation for himself in Bloodworth.

However, the problem was nothing serious. Still dazed by the drink he returned to his house and his dream. There was no organized fire department. In the mid-17th century, it was up to the common citizen to respond to the sound of church bells to rush to their local church to collect firefighting equipment and To help fight fire in the 17th century, there were no Fades as we know them today. Each parish had to, by law, purchase firefighting equipment, but of course there was no one who could go and make sure it was fully operational. very often no one tried to use it, pumps were built of a very basic nature, basically the fire truck of that time was a bucket with a bomb inside, some didn't even have wheels, or were carried like a sedan chair near the fire or pulled on a sleigh, then you had to find the water supply, you had to fill them with water and the people whose house was on fire and probably the neighbors would pump the keepers to help you put Of course, in every parish in those days there was a gentleman called beetle and very often it was a man who had to rally people to actually throw the device into the fire to put it out on Sunday night in all itsextension.

The calamity that had struck London was becoming painfully evident: what had initially affected only the area around Pudding Lane had now spread through the surrounding streets unchecked, causing people in a much wider area to panic and flee their homes, the Reverend Thomas Vincent wrote in 1667. a

witness

to the fire recalled the desolation of the people; It would have saddened the heart of a person concerned about UNC to see the pale cheeks, the sad looks, the tears running down the eyes, to hear the sighs and moans, the sad and tearful speeches of the different citizens when they took their wives away. , some of their children's beds, and their little ones, some of their sick beds, from their homes and sent them to the country, now the hopes of London are gone, their hearts sank now there is a general transfer in the city. and that in greater haste than before the plague, their goods being in greater danger than by fire than their persons by disease, King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, were greatly concerned about the course of the events, as the peeps remembered doing it for an hour.

I have seen the fire burn in every direction and no one in my sight makes an effort to put it out, but rather remove their goods and leave everything in the hands of the fire and I have seen it come to the courtyard of Ste and the Mighty wind and push it towards the city and everything After so long a drought, even the very stones of the churches became combustible, so I whitened everything and went to the king's closet in the chapel where people came to look for me and I gave them an account that shocked everyone and the word spread even the king, so they called me and I told the king and the Duke of York what I saw and that unless his majesty ordered the houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire, they seemed very worried and ordered me to go and see my lord mayor from him and order him not to spare the houses but to demolish them before the fire in all the ways that the Duke of York ordered me to tell him that if he wants to have more soldiers he will do so, however, it was Monday, September 3, more than 24 hours after start.

After the fire, before any kind of organized action was taken, the king ordered the establishment of fire stations throughout the city in an attempt to stop any spread of the flames, manned by 30 soldiers and 100 ordinary citizens were set up in Fleet Street Feta Lane and Sho Lane and in Smithfield St Martin's Lane and the London Wall. King Charles also immediately repealed the law that forced people to bear the costs of rebuilding houses torn down to start a fire. Break The Sovereign Faced with an impossible situation, he probably did everything in his power to help the pious who remembered delivering the king's message to St.

Thomas Bloodworth, whose behavior had changed since the early hours of Sunday morning and who At last he met Lord May in Cannon Street as a passed man with a scarf around his neck responded to the king's message like a fainted woman Lord, what can I do? I'm exhausted, people don't obey me. I've been tearing down houses, but the fire reaches us faster than we can do it, which didn't need more. soldiers and that he himself needed to freshen up after having been up all night, so he left me and me and walked home seeing people almost too distracted and with no means of putting out the fire.

The house is too thick there and full of things to burn like tar and pitch and warehouses full of oil and wines and brandy and other things Thomas Vincent also remembered that the Lord Mayor comes with his offices a confusion there the council is removed and London so famous for his wisdom and skill can he find Neither brain nor hands to prevent his ruin on Monday 3rd September Lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth was replaced by the Duke of York as the man responsible for coordinating firefighting in London and the jke appears to have carried out the task diligently in the great distance of London. he actually he was stopped by the intervention of King Charles II, who actually got the Duke of York to bring in the army and the navy and they started blowing up and blowing up houses and making a firebreak at that time.

More people of higher authority met and finally decided that they would really stop the fire. Contemporary

accounts

record that James himself supervised the work, exposed his person to the very flames and ruins of buildings that fell on him, and sometimes worked with his own hands. To give an example to others, this map shows how the fire had spread from Sunday the 2nd to Monday the 3rd and until Tuesday the 4th of September. On Tuesday flames engulfed two of the city's most impressive buildings, St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal House, the elegant portals and courtyard had provided a charming Center of Commerce in London since 1568.

These once imposing buildings now They were reports. Burning Hulks on that terrible Tuesday, the fire eventually consumed most of the city and showed no signs of abating despite efforts. of the people to stop their advance for the Reverend Thomas Vincent this was the worst day of the Great Fire of London as he remembered and if Monday night was terrible Tuesday night was more terrible when most of the city was consumed many thousands now They have done it, they have nowhere to rest and the fields are the only receptacle they can find for themselves or their property.

The fire continues to advance towards them and now threatens the suburbs. Finally, on Wednesday, September 5, help arrived from the elements that London had had. He prayed that the wind that had fanned and fed the eastern flames for three whole days would suddenly calm down and change direction and begin to blow gently toward the south; The fire was stopped in its march westwards through London and, to their relief, the fine houses of the rich who lived at the end of The Strand were saved by the end of the day. Apart from sporadic fires, especially in the temple and in Cripplegate, the worst of the setting was over and the shocked citizens of London were able to inspect the terrible damage caused by the flames.

Samuel Peeps recalled with relief the moments when he realized that The fire was under control at home and while I expected to find our house on fire, the fire did not happen and there I would find greater hope than I had expected. My confidence in finding our office on fire was such that I did not dare to ask anyone how it was until I arrived and saw that it was not burned but on fire and fined there with the blowing up of houses and the great help provided by the workers there. there is. A good stop was made at the Mark Lane end and ours, so I went to bed and had a good night's sleep about midnight, and then when I got up I found that there had been a great alarm that the French and Dutch They had gotten up, which proved nothing more than that.

It was strange to see how long this time seemed since Sunday, having been full of variety of action and little sleep for a week or more and had almost forgotten the day of the week. People remembered clearly in their Memoirs the rumor that spread among the poor and abused inhabitants of London almost as fast as the flames that had ruined their homes and lives that their mortal enemies, the French and Dutch with whom Britain was in war, were on their way in ships to take advantage of the misfortune of the Londoners. It was as if fate had made a last ditch effort to instill panic and fear in thousands of bewildered and homeless people.

The cost of the Great Fire to the City of London was, of course, immense. The face of the capital had changed forever. 13,200 houses. 87 parish. The church's six chapels, three city gates and four stone bridges were lost to the flames. Also destroyed were St Paul's Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, Bridewell Guild Hall and Newgate Gaol. It is estimated that the financial losses exceeded the 10 million a disaster for a city whose annual income was barely 12,000 The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed the entire city, 13,200 houses, 400 streets, most of the halls of the liy company and approximately one of the three streets of the old Bridge of London and over 100,000 people were left homeless considering the ferocity of the fire, very few people were recorded as having died, it is believed that perhaps only eight died in the flames including Fara's poor maid.

What cannot be calculated is how many perished while sleeping outdoors during the harsh winter of 1666 and 1667, still homeless, some with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Three weeks after the fire ended, a citizens' inquiry was organized to investigate the causes of the Great Fire of London. The strong suspicion held by bitter Londoners that the fire had been deliberately started by Papist conspirators became reality when Robert Hubert, 26, a year-old French watchmaker made a detailed confession after his arrest in Romford, Essex. . Hubert claimed to have deliberately fired Thomas Fara's Bakers by throwing a fireball through the window.

Farino, for his part, denied that there had ever been a window in the bakery and claimed that the entire fire was a result. of an accident, but Hubert insisted that he had started the fire intentionally despite the prospect of certain death as a result of his confession. However, Hubert changed his story many times to the confusion and annoyance of his judges, who had him hanged anyway even though his story was palpably false; in particular, Thomas Farino quickly put his signature on the order for Hubert's execution. , thus shifting the burden of responsibility for the fire from himself to the French, it later emerged that Hubert had not even been in the field when the great fire started. there was no fire insurance of any kind, so merchants and people lost their homes, they lost everything unless they actually had money in the bank, their assets, their properties were completely destroyed by fire and they had no means to get money to rebuild their facilities or their buildings and the devastated London made their plans to rebuild and regenerate the city a huge task that did not begin until 1667.

The housing program was not completed until 1672, but important centers of trade, such as the Royal Stock Exchange, were quickly rebuilt and opened for business. Something good came out of the tragedy of the fire, surely it gave the architect Christopher Ren the opportunity to show the great genius of him in 1685. Ren had rebuilt more than 50 of the church. The church was lost in the fire, but it was not until 1710 that he completed his most famous work, the Magnificent Reconstruction of St. Paul's Cathedral, to this day the most beautiful and beloved place of worship in London, and so ends the story of two momentous years in the 17th century in which London and its people were devastated by fire and

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. but despite its terrible trials and tribulations, the spirit of the city remained intact, its heart and soul, untouched by the events of 1665 and 1666 and, although it had received the hardest lessons it had learned, perhaps the determination and The pride of New London is best summed up. next to the inscription on the south side of Sir Christopher Ren's Memorial to the great fire the monument built a short distance from where the fire started in Pudding Lane the words proclaimed while the ruins were still smoking parliament passed an act by which Public works were to be restored to Greater Beauty with public money raised through carbon taxes.

Churches and St. Paul's Cathedral were to be rebuilt from their foundations in all magnificence, bridges, gates and prisons to be renovated, sewers to be restored. cleaned, the streets straight and regular and those that were too narrow became wider and the markets and slaughterhouses were moved to separate places that each house should be built with party walls all of square stone or brick London was restored in 3 years the world saw finished what It was supposed to be the work of an era.