Great Plague of London (1665-1666): The Last Major Plague

The Great Plague of London of 1665 to 1666 was the last major epidemic of bubonic plague in England. Between the spring of 1665 and the following year it killed an estimated 100,000 people, roughly a fifth of London’s population, with the worst deaths in the crowded suburbs outside the old City walls. Recorded in the weekly bills of mortality and in the diary of Samuel Pepys, it is one of the best-documented epidemics before modern times.

Background: plague in early modern Europe

Plague had returned to Europe repeatedly since the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. London suffered serious outbreaks in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625 and 1636, each killing tens of thousands. Townspeople knew the signs of the disease well, and the city had standing plague orders on how to respond.

In the early 1660s plague struck the Dutch Republic, killing many thousands in Amsterdam in 1663 and 1664. England imposed quarantine on Dutch shipping, but trade continued, and the disease may have arrived through goods or people from the Low Countries. The exact route of entry is unknown.

By 1665 London had grown to an estimated 400,000 to 460,000 inhabitants, making it one of Europe’s largest cities. Most lived not in the walled City but in poor, crowded suburbs such as St Giles-in-the-Fields, Whitechapel, Stepney and Southwark, where housing was cramped and sanitation primitive.

Cause and spread of the disease

The Great Plague was bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. In 2016 scientists confirmed the presence of its DNA in skeletons from a 1665 burial pit at the New Churchyard near Liverpool Street, excavated during the building of the Crossrail railway.

The disease circulates among rats and other rodents and is transmitted to humans mainly by flea bites. Some researchers argue that human fleas and body lice also spread it from person to person, which would help explain how quickly it moved through crowded households. Victims developed fever, painful swellings called buboes in the groin or armpits, and often died within a week. Some cases developed into pneumonic plague, which spreads directly through coughing and was almost always fatal.

Seventeenth-century doctors did not know about bacteria. Most blamed miasma, or corrupted air, along with God’s judgement on sin. Remedies included burning fires and tobacco to purify the air, carrying sweet-smelling herbs, and a wide range of pills and potions sold by physicians and quacks alike.

Course of the epidemic

The first plague deaths appeared in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields late in 1664 and early in 1665. Numbers stayed low through a cold spring, then rose quickly in the warm weather of May and June. By July the disease was spreading through the western and northern suburbs and into the City itself.

Those who could afford to leave did so. King Charles II and the court left London in early July, moving to Salisbury and then Oxford, where Parliament met in October 1665. The law courts closed, and many wealthy merchants, physicians and clergy fled to the countryside. The poor, servants and many tradesmen had no choice but to stay.

The epidemic peaked in September 1665. In the week ending 19 September the bills of mortality recorded 7,165 plague deaths out of 8,297 burials, the highest weekly figure of the outbreak. Mass graves known as plague pits were dug in churchyards and on open ground, and carts collected bodies at night.

Cooler weather from October brought a steady decline. The king returned to Whitehall in February 1666. Plague lingered in London through 1666 at a much lower level and spread to other towns, including Colchester and the Derbyshire village of Eyam, whose residents famously isolated themselves.

Public health measures

The city authorities acted under plague orders inherited from earlier outbreaks. Infected houses were shut up for 40 days with all occupants inside. The door was painted with a red cross and the words “Lord have mercy upon us”, and a watchman stood outside day and night. Households were supplied with food, but confinement with the sick meant that whole families often died.

Each parish appointed “searchers of the dead”, usually elderly women, who examined bodies and reported the cause of death to the parish clerk. Examiners, nurses and buriers were also employed. Pest houses were set up outside the city for some of the sick, though they could hold only a small fraction of patients.

The Lord Mayor, Sir John Lawrence, remained in the City throughout the epidemic, while George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, oversaw order in the wider metropolis. Public gatherings were restricted, fairs were cancelled and fires were ordered to burn in the streets to cleanse the air. Dogs and cats were killed in large numbers because they were thought to carry infection, which may have unintentionally helped the rats that actually harboured the disease.

The bills of mortality

London’s bills of mortality were weekly printed lists of christenings and burials in each parish, compiled by the Company of Parish Clerks. They listed causes of death as reported by the searchers, from plague and fevers to “teeth” and “griping in the guts”. In 1662 the statistician John Graunt had used them to pioneer the study of population, an achievement covered in John Graunt’s Bills of Mortality.

During 1665 Londoners scanned the bills each week to judge the danger. Contemporaries already suspected that they understated the toll. Searchers could be bribed to record another cause to avoid a house being shut up, Quakers and Jews used their own burial grounds, and the system broke down at the peak. Nonconformists and the very poor were also often missed.

The annual bill for 1665 recorded 97,306 burials, of which 68,596 were attributed to plague. Because deaths from other causes were also far above normal, most historians conclude that the true plague toll was around 100,000.

The main figures, as far as they can be reconstructed, are summarised below.

Daily life during the plague

Samuel Pepys, a naval official who stayed in London for much of the epidemic, recorded the eerie silence of streets, grass growing in Whitehall courts, red crosses on doors and his own fear on seeing corpses carried past. He sent his wife to Woolwich and moved with the Navy Office to Greenwich, but continued to work, and he counted 1665 as one of his most prosperous years.

The physician Nathaniel Hodges also remained in London and treated thousands of patients; his account Loimologia appeared in Latin in 1672. Many clergy who had been ejected from their parishes after the Restoration preached in the empty churches abandoned by fleeing ministers. Trade collapsed, unemployment soared among servants and craftsmen, and the city depended on charitable collections to feed the poor.

Outside London, fear of the capital was intense. Towns turned away travellers from London, and goods from the city were treated with suspicion. At Cambridge the university closed, sending a young Isaac Newton home to Lincolnshire, where his annus mirabilis of discovery began.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Great Fire of London ended the plague. The Great Fire of London of September 1666 came after plague deaths had already fallen to low levels, and it burned mainly the walled City rather than the suburbs where plague had been worst.

Myth: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is an eyewitness diary. Published in 1722, it is a carefully researched historical novel. Defoe was a small child in 1665, although he drew on the bills of mortality and real accounts.

Myth: “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” describes plague symptoms. The rhyme is not recorded before the 19th century, and folklorists find no link to the plague.

Timeline

• 1664–1665, winter: First plague deaths are recorded in St Giles-in-the-Fields.
• 1665, May–June: Plague deaths rise rapidly in the western suburbs.
• 1665, early July: The king and court leave London.
• 1665, week to 19 September: The epidemic peaks, with 7,165 recorded plague deaths in a week.
• 1665, October: Parliament meets in Oxford; deaths begin to fall.
• 1666, February: Charles II returns to Whitehall.
• 1666, 2–6 September: The Great Fire destroys much of the City.
• 1666, end of year: Plague deaths in London fall to low levels; the epidemic is effectively over.

Legacy

The Great Plague was the last major plague epidemic in England. Scattered cases appeared in London’s bills for some years afterwards, but the disease then vanished from Britain until the early 20th century. Historians still debate why: possible explanations include changes in rat populations, better housing after the fire, stricter quarantine of shipping and changes in the bacterium or its hosts.

The epidemic left a rich written record that has made it a reference point for every later outbreak, from the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720 to the COVID-19 pandemic, when Pepys and Defoe were widely reread. Archaeology, especially the Crossrail excavations, continues to add evidence about the victims.

Why it matters

The Great Plague shows how an early modern city coped with catastrophe using quarantine, data collection and public order measures, some of which anticipate modern public health. It also exposed deep inequalities: the rich fled while the poor stayed and died. As the last great plague in England, it marks the end of a deadly chapter that had begun with the Black Death three centuries earlier.