When the 10 horrors great of London’s infamous 1665 Great Plague first surfaced, the city was caught off‑guard. Official records list 68,000 deaths, yet many scholars argue that the true toll edged closer to a staggering 100,000 souls.
10 Horrors Great Overview
10 Hush
At the outbreak’s onset, when mortality began to climb visibly, authorities deliberately downplayed the crisis. England feared that any public acknowledgment would scare overseas merchants; ships arriving at foreign ports would be refused, halting trade.
Nevertheless, wealthy Londoners quickly caught on, packing their belongings and fleeing to the countryside in hopes of escaping the contagion. Meanwhile, many ordinary citizens ignored the warning signs and carried on with their social lives as if nothing were amiss.
9 Not Allowed To Leave
Although the affluent escaped early, the city’s poorest could not. As death counts surged, laborers and slum dwellers clung to their cramped homes, fearing loss of livelihood and shelter. Their options were limited to staying put.
By June 1665, when weekly fatalities reached the hundreds, a wave of desperate poor tried to flee to the countryside. Yet the magistrates ceased issuing the necessary clearance papers that proved one was plague‑free, effectively trapping them.
To obtain permission, one needed a certificate confirming freedom from infection—a document the lord mayor stopped providing. Unscrupulous forgers sold counterfeit papers for a steep price, leaving the destitute to endure the horror.
8 Shut Up In Houses
One of the Privy Council’s plague orders demanded that any household harboring an infected person be sealed shut. Every resident, sick or healthy, had to remain inside for a full forty days, after which a red cross was painted on the door as a warning.
This decree sparked controversy, as many saw it as a death sentence for the uninfected family members. Physician Nathaniel Hodges argued the policy inflated the mortality rate, yet he lacked the power to overturn it. The rationale was to isolate the disease from the broader populace.
Historical accounts describe entire families, even infants, confined within their homes. Parents sometimes watched helplessly as their children succumbed, either to the disease or to starvation. In other cases, parents perished first, leaving children to die alone.
By September 1665, the quarantine system collapsed under the sheer volume of illness and death, rendering the orders ineffective.
7 . . . Until They Had The Plague
A disastrous quarantine began when a household was locked inside for forty days because their maid displayed suspicious skin spots. Though the maid recovered, the family remained confined until officials inspected the home. By then, the lady of the house had developed a fever, prompting another forty‑day confinement.
The second isolation period saw more family members fall ill. Stagnant air, lack of exercise, and endless staring at the same walls took a toll on their health.
After a third inspection, officials found the family still sick and imposed yet another quarantine. Tragically, one of the inspectors inadvertently introduced the plague itself, leading to the majority of the family’s demise.
6 Eyam
While Londoners were locked indoors, a consignment of contaminated clothing arrived in the Derbyshire village of Eyam, bringing the plague with it.
As the disease spread, the rector William Mompesson persuaded the villagers to self‑quarantine, preventing transmission to neighboring settlements. Ultimately, roughly eighty percent of Eyam’s inhabitants, including the rector’s wife, perished.
5 Cats And Dogs Slaughtered
Misinformation blamed cats and dogs for spreading the plague, prompting a citywide decree to eradicate them.
Unaware that these predators kept the rat population—carriers of plague‑bearing fleas—in check, the lord mayor’s order led to the slaughter of over 200,000 cats and about 40,000 dogs, inadvertently facilitating the disease’s spread.
4 Syphilis Was Thought To Prevent The Plague
Mid‑17th‑century physicians clung to superstition, desperate to make sense of the catastrophe without modern tools. A rumor circulated that contracting syphilis granted immunity to the plague, as if one ailment could cancel the other.
Although baseless, the claim went unchallenged. Many doctors believed the body could “cast off” two poisons simultaneously, rather than battling a single deadly disease, imagining the two illnesses would fight each other and leave the host unharmed.
3 Fear The Plague Nurses
With the death toll soaring, the city hired plague nurses to tend to the sick. These women were largely illiterate and received meagre wages, forcing some to resort to desperate measures for survival.
They were accused of stealing from the dead, hastening patients’ deaths to claim belongings, and even deliberately infecting healthy individuals with plague sores to profit from the ensuing deaths.
2 People Threw Themselves Into The Pits
Overwhelmed churchyards could not accommodate the dead, so mass pits were dug. Men with carts collected bodies and dumped them without traditional funeral rites.
Although the public was barred from approaching these pits for fear of contagion, delirious victims were observed racing toward them, sometimes throwing themselves in and being buried alongside the deceased.
1 An Unpleasant Death
Dying from bubonic plague was a harrowing ordeal lasting several days, marked by a cascade of symptoms.
Initial signs included severe headaches, high fever, and vomiting, often accompanied by uncontrollable shivering. The tongue would swell, and lymph nodes in the groin, armpits, or neck would enlarge. Eventually, the skin turned black with blotches, earning the disease its moniker “Black Death.”
Elizabeth, a former Pennsylvanian now residing in Massachusetts, researches early American history and writes in her spare time.