All language subtitles for The.Great.Plague.2020.1080p.WEB.H264-CBFM

NEWSREEL: Prime Minister says
Covid is likely to spread...

When Covid-19 hit the UK...

The seriousness of the situation...

..it seemed a
uniquely terrible event.

..can recover, for others,
it can be deadly.

But it wasn't the first time we'd
suffered a deadly epidemic.

In a frightening parallel
350 years earlier,

we endured one of the greatest
tragedies in British history,

the Great Plague.

Over 18 months, beginning in 1665,

this horrific disease killed
an estimate 100,000 people

in London alone,

a quarter of the entire population

and a further 100,000 as
it spread across the country.

We're telling the horrifying story
of how the catastrophe unfolded

day by day, week by week.

We filmed this series as
Covid-19 began its spread

across the world,

and, for me, the connections between
the two pandemics are remarkable.

It's a frightening
lesson from history.

I'm Xand van Tulleken,

and I'm tracking the
epidemic back to its source...

It all kicked off right here.

..and telling the
stories of its victims.

Almost worse to have survived it

and having lost five
children and your husband.

John Sergeant discovers the
terrible symptoms of the plague...

It's the bubo of the bubonic
plague. The bubo, yeah. Oh, God.

..and investigates whether medical
treatments did more harm than good.

You could heat that up,
place it into the bubo to burn it.

The pain would have been agonising.

Raksha Dave uncovers
extraordinary new evidence

which reveals how the
disease really spread.

So you think that these have
been spreading the plague?

Just one is enough to
be sick and even to die.

This is the story
of the Great Plague.

21st century London is a world
away from the city of the 1600s.

But in secret corners
of the modern city,

we can still find traces of
what happened here in 1665,

the deadliest epidemic
in Britain's history,

the Great Plague.

With my knowledge as a doctor
of modern infectious disease,

I'll be investigating how
the plague devastated

first London and then
large parts of the country.

The first thing I
need to figure out,

as with any disease outbreak,

is how and where it started.

And this book, A Journal Of The
Plague Year by Daniel Defoe,

the famous author
of Robinson Crusoe,

has some important
information for me.

Defoe was just a child at
the time of the Great Plague,

but his book is believed to be
based on the account of his uncle.

He tells us that two men,
said to be Frenchmen,

died of the plague in Long Acre,

or rather the upper
end of Drury Lane.

Well, Long Acre runs down there,

this is the upper end of Drury Lane.

It all kicked off right here.

It's believed the
Frenchmen were weavers

who imported the plague into London
in an infected shipment of cotton.

The first two deaths
were in December 1664,

but then there were no
more until four months later,

in April 1665,

when two more people died.

All four of those early
deaths occurred here,

in an area around Drury Lane
called St Giles in the Fields.

It seemed like an
outbreak was brewing.

Today, this is the heart of London's
theatre and nightlife,

but 350 years ago,
it was a new suburb,

recently sprung up, outside
the official City of London.

In the 50 years before
the Great Plague,

countryside around London
had been swallowed up,

as the population doubled
from 200,000 to 400,000 people.

Like many of the
suburbs that sprung up outside

the ancient city walls,

St Giles was one of the
poorest areas of London.

Here, slightly better off
people would have lived

on one of the main wider streets,

but off those streets
were narrow alleys like this one.

They were crammed with
illegally built slum housing

and in late April, 1665,

it was in these back
alleys where cases of plague

began to multiply.

Families of up to ten people were
crammed into two room houses.

They worked as weavers,
labourers, servants and porters.

Diseases like smallpox,
tuberculosis and typhus were common.

Even the plague wasn't unfamiliar,

in the previous 300 years,

there had been 18
major outbreaks in London.

But this one would
surpass them all.

In the first week of May,

the plague spread to several streets
around St Giles in the Fields

and there were nine more deaths.

The rising death toll
confirmed to Londoners

that a plague epidemic had begun,

and it struck terror
into their hearts.

Older residents would have
seen friends and family suffer

with this disease before,
and they knew what to expect.

John Sergeant is discovering
why the symptoms of this disease

held such dread.

I'm meeting specialist,
Doctor Chris Conlon,

at the Weald and Downland Museum,

where many houses dating to
the time of the Great Plague

have been preserved.

Why was the plague so frightening?

Well, it was a
terrible disease for people,

and it had a very high death rate,

so it caused huge
devastation and terror.

There was a bubonic type,

which is to do with lymph
nodes, a septicaemic type,

which is when it gets
into your bloodstream,

and a pneumonic type
that affects your lungs.

And they're all pretty terrible,
in fact it does still exist today.

What, across the world?
Yeah, for example,

a big outbreak a couple
of years ago in Madagascar,

been outbreaks in China
and even get it in southwest USA.

In 1665, it was
predominantly bubonic plague

that swept through London.

It was a bacterial infection,

unlike Covid-19,
which is caused by a virus.

Plague was incredibly infectious

and killed about 70%
of those who caught it.

With the help of
prosthetic make-up artist,

Florence Carter, Doctor Conlon
is going to show me

what a victim of this type
of plague would have endured.

If I do have the plague,
Doctor, what would I feel like?

You'd be a bit pale. Right.

And find you'll be a bit sweaty.

At the same time,
you'd be getting a headache.

In addition to that,

you'd be developing aches and pains
in your muscles and joints,

and you might even shiver.

And then, as the disease progresses,

you're going to get a very high
fever, maybe up to 40 degrees,

you might even get
confused or delirious.

Then you'll probably start
noticing some pain in your neck,

where your lymph node
is starting to enlarge.

Right, so here?

And how quickly would
that really develop?

That could come up over
a few hours to a day or so.

So this is a terrifying
moment, isn't it?

Yeah. This is the first
real signs of the plague?

That's right, it's the, it's
the bubo of the bubonic plague.

The bubo, yeah. Oh, God.

And you would feel that if you had
to turn your head to the right,

it would be too painful to do. Yeah.

So your head would be sort of tilted
to one side to avoid the pain.

I'm aware of the fact that
just the loneliness of it

would be so striking, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it would be terrifying.
It would be...

..you're going to die, and by the
way, we can't do anything for you

and just stay there and
think about nothing else.

Yeah, yeah.

And would the pain be
growing all the time?

Yes, cos it's getting
larger all the time.

Yeah. And you might actually get
a rash as the bacteria spreads

into the skin a bit.

And these bacteria are
multiplying rapidly,

but more importantly,

this bacteria is now
in your bloodstream.

When it gets into the bloodstream,

it's bad news, and most people
in those days wouldn't survive.

So what's happening here is that
your nose circulation

has been affected,
and the tip of your nose

no longer has any blood supply,

so the skin and the
tissue underneath is dying

and becoming gangrenous and
will turn blue and then black.

Once people know
that this is spreading,

it just...you can see why people
just panic and go sort of mad.

Yes, that's right, and
to see these symptoms appearing,

these big lumps on
peoples' necks and groins

and the rash and the gangrene
are pretty horrifying sights.

So from the time that I fell
ill to now, how long's it been?

This is probably three or four
days after you first started

feeling a bit hot,
and sweaty and achy

and probably five or six days
after you first got infected.

This is a very rapidly
progressive illness.

It's time, I suppose,
for the inevitable question.

At this stage, Doc,
how long have I got?

You'll be dead within 24 hours,
if not sooner.

So this is the really end
stage of this terrible disease.

Is there any hope at all?

No hope at this stage at all.

By early May 1665,

13 people had died of plague,

and thousands more were now at
risk from this incurable disease.

And fear was stalking
the streets of London.

By May 1665,

the plague had taken hold in London,

and in the cramped back
alleys of the capital,

it was spreading rapidly.

In the four months since
the first reported case,

13 people have died
and many more are now infected.

In the week to the 15th of May,

there were three more deaths,

a small increase, but significantly,

the disease was now
spreading beyond the parish of

St Giles in the Fields.

And the first case was
reported within London city walls.

The first death in the square mile,

within the ancient
city walls of London,

occurred here on
Mansion House Place,

which back then was
called Bearbinder Lane.

And again, the author
Daniel Defoe blamed the French,

saying the man who'd died here

was a Frenchman who had
selfishly fled the outbreak

in the suburb of St Giles.

Plague wasn't just
in the slums any more.

Bearbinder Lane was just
around the corner from this,

the Royal Exchange,
the financial heart of the city.

It's where London's
elite came to do business,

and they were now horrified
that the plague threatened them.

We know people are getting
worried because they tell us so.

Famous diarist, Samuel Pepys,
describes going to a coffee house

where everybody is
talking about the plague.

Another eye witness,
a priest called Thomas Vincent,

tells us that by now,
everyone is really frightened.

Thomas Vincent was a puritan
minister who lived in Spitalfields

with a group of his congregation.

He believed the plague
was a punishment from god,

inflicted on Londoners because
of their promiscuous behaviour.

Samuel Pepys lived in rather
more comfortable surroundings

with his wife and servants,

just north of the Tower of London.

He didn't blame
plague on the almighty,

but instead wrote "only god could
save them" from the disease.

Both men knew from experience,

the rising death toll indicated
a terrible epidemic was coming.

In the last week of May,

the number of plague deaths
reported increased to 17.

Most victims were still in St Giles,
in the alleys near Drury Lane.

Despite the growing fear,

normal life in the area continued.

Ale houses, coffee houses
and theatres

were still packed with customers.

This is the famous
Theatre Royal Drury Lane,

it's the oldest theatre in London

and at the moment is undergoing
a massive refurbishment.

But the original theatre was
built on this site

two years before the outbreak.

It was established by
King Charles II himself,

hence the royal in the name.

The theatre was located
just a stone's throw

from the epicentre of the epidemic.

Despite that, each night, 700 people

crammed into a building only 34
metres long and 18 metres wide.

But it gradually became
clear that normal public life

couldn't continue.

It was at this point, in June 1665,

that the rising death toll
finally forced King Charles

to close the theatres.

To find out how
people were reacting to

the rapidly escalating epidemic,

I'm meeting historian
Vanessa Harding.

We're here in
St Giles in the Fields,

and it's this parish where
the plague began in 1665.

How are people in
London feeling at this stage?

I think they're starting
to get really quite worried.

The number of deaths
by the end of May

is as many as the last six
or seven years put together.

And people do have a lot of
experience of plague in London,

and they know that if
deaths start to rise

in the late spring, early summer
and don't go down again,

then there's a good chance
they're in for a bad epidemic.

Why does it begin here?

At the time, this is
a western suburb of London.

We don't know why it starts here,

but one of the things that's
really interesting is that

this is about as far as you can
get from the port areas of London.

So if plague is being
imported from abroad on fleas,

on rats, on ships,

if that were true,
then you would expect it to start

down by the waterside
or in the east end.

This is almost the last
place you'd expect it to begin.

OK, so that's quite mysterious.

This is one of
many inconsistencies

that have led historians and
scientists to question

the long held assumption
that the Great Plague,

known scientifically
as Yersinia pestis,

was spread by rats and their fleas.

What have you learned from
looking at parish records

about how the plague was
spreading in this part of London?

We have a lot of records
surviving from this time,

and one of the things that
comes through from that is that

it often seems to
cluster in households.

And it's not spreading in
a sort of even geographical ripple,

it doesn't infect
every house in one street,

some families are infected
but by no means all.

So that, to me, would suggest
it's spreading person to person,

rather than having rats,

which you'd expect would move
all the way along a street.

Yes, yes, it
certainly looks like that.

So you've got these inconsistencies
with the geographic location,

with the way it's spreading,

are we sure this is bubonic plague?

We do know that now.

There have been quite a lot of
excavations of buried bodies,

of human remains,

from plague sites over
the last few years,

and analysis of the ancient
DNA shows that Yersinia pestis

was present.

So we know it's plague,
but the inconsistencies remain?

Yes.

And I think that means we have to
look again at what we think we know

about Yersinia pestis and its
being spread by rats and rat fleas

and think about whether
there might be other ways

in which it's being spread.

So what you're suggesting
is that we have to rethink

everything we know about bubonic
plague and how it spreads?

Yeah. Wow.

For 100 years, it's been believed
that only rats and rat fleas

were spreading the disease,

but there's now new evidence

suggesting plague was actually
transmitted in a different way.

Raksha Dave is in Marseille,
on France's Mediterranean Coast,

to meet the scientists
investigating a new theory.

A terrible plague
epidemic struck here in 1720,

55 years after
London's Great Plague.

100,000 people were killed.

It was Europe's last
ever epidemic of the disease

and since then, Marseille University

has been at the cutting edge
of research into its causes.

Recently, they've made
some astonishing discoveries.

The work here was overseen
by Professor Drankor.

He's taking me to see the animals

he has identified as
plague transmitters.

Oh, here we go.

And they're not rats.

Right.

They're bred in a secure room
in the university's basement.

Wow.

Ugh.

Is that where they are
more comfortable then,

latching onto cloth?

Body lice are similar to head lice,

but these blood suckers have adapted

to live on clothes
rather than in hair.

While head lice are still
widespread in Europe today,

modern laundry methods have
almost eradicated body lice.

So you think that these little
bugs have been spreading the plague?

And how did you figure that out?

So how long does it take for the
rabbits that didn't have the plague

to then be infected by the plague?

24 hours?!

Wow.

And there's another
human parasite bred here

that's also been proved can
spread bubonic plague directly

without any rats involved.

So fleas can spread plague
without rats being involved at all?

When I was first taught
about the plague at school,

I was told that it was
incontrovertible scientific fact

that it was rats and its fleas
that were spreading the plague.

But what I've just learned has
just turned all of that on its head.

This ground-breaking
research from Marseille

allows us to look at the Great
Plague in a completely new light.

The way the disease spread,

the stories eye witnesses told

and the preventive measures taken

in the 17th century could
all make a lot more sense

if we put less emphasis on the rat

and look more closely
at human fleas and lice.

By mid-June 1665,

the plague was
accelerating through London,

and 168 people a
week were now dying.

There was no local government
in the 17th century,

so it was officials from
the parish churches

who had to try and deal
with this spiralling epidemic.

One of the few buildings that
has miraculously survived

from the time of the Great Plague
is St Bartholomew the Great,

London's oldest parish church.

Now, like all of
London's parish churches,

Great St Bart's played an important
role in the response to the plague.

Parish officers organised money
and food relief for the poor.

They also recorded all
plague deaths in their area.

And they had to bury the ever
increasing numbers of dead.

Each of those deaths was marked
by a tolling of the church bell.

The actual bell that rang out here
during the Great Plague survives.

It dates to the early 1500s.

And it still works.

I mean, this is amazing.

So this is the great
bell that's going to ring,

but before it does,

I'm just going to get
in my ear defenders,

cos I think it's going
to be pretty loud.

Tower Captain, Paul Norman,
still rings the bell today,

just as his predecessors
did 350 years ago.

BELL TOLLS

You can imagine it
ringing out all over London.

For me it's pretty
magical, I have to say,

but that sound ringing out
during the Great Plague,

I think it would have felt
very different hearing it then.

The infamous death knells rang
out from every London church

to mark each death in their parish.

As the epidemic
intensified in early July,

the bells of the worst hit parishes

were tolling over 20 times a day.

Death knells like that,
from parish churches,

would have been heard
all across London.

There was no traffic
noise to drown them out.

And as they began to ring
with more and more frequency,

it would have been
a forbidding reminder

of the ever-increasing
onslaught of the plague.

And as the bells closer to
your neighbourhood began to ring,

you could literally hear
the plague approaching.

Must have been terrifying.

As the bells continued to ring out,

they triggered panic

and the greatest mass
exodus London has ever seen.

Two months into the outbreak,

the number of plague deaths
was doubling every fortnight.

By the beginning of July,

470 people a week were dying

and thousands more
were falling sick.

The deaths were
overwhelmingly in the poor suburbs

to the west of the
walled City of London,

but the contagion was
now spreading east.

Terrified by this
spiralling epidemic,

most better off Londoners now
decided to try and escape the city.

Tens of thousands
of people fled London

in the greatest exodus
in the city's history.

The people that fled were
those that could afford to,

the merchants, the lawyers,
the professional classes,

and the streets were clogged
with coaches and carts,

piled high with servants,
clothing and prized possessions.

Almost every noble
family also escaped London,

including King Charles II,

who fled to his palace at
Hampton Court, ten miles away.

Mostly it was the poor
who were left behind.

They had no choice.

They needed to keep
working to survive,

and they had nowhere else to go.

And it was in the back alley
slums where they lived

that the plague was
already most rampant.

St Bart's Hospital was
one of the few places

that the poor, who
were trapped in London,

could come hoping
to receive treatment.

I'm here to have
a look at their archives,

to see what they tell us
about the care they received.

Archivist Kate Jarman has
found original documents revealing

that even hospitals offered
limited help to plague victims.

So, Kate, this is the
hospital journal, is that right?

That's right, it's actually the
minutes of the Board of Governors

of the hospital, so it's really a
record of the day to day life

of the hospital,
activities of the staff.

So it's like the
hospital diary? Yeah.

And what does it say
about the Great Plague?

The record says the hospital
did not admit incurable patients,

so it's probably unlikely that
they were admitting patients

for the plague.

These may well have been patients
admitted with other symptoms,

or who developed the symptoms
of the plague while they were here.

In fact, the hospital
was implementing measures

to keep contagion out,
locking the gates early,

and making sure that
goods brought into the hospital

were as risk free as possible.

One of the interesting things is
the record of what was happening

with the medical staff.

So here we can see the
governors have ordered

that the hundred pounds
due to Doctor Micklethwaite

and Doctor Tearnes
not be paid to them.

And that's because
they'd actually left London.

They'd decided that the
city was too contagious,

and in common with a lot
of people of their class,

they would've got out of town.

I mean, I can
understand why they left,

but it doesn't feel like
what doctors should be doing.

Yeah, but I think what's
also interesting, really,

is the stories of
those who did stay.

People like Margaret Blague,

who was the matron of
the hospital at that time.

So she was responsible for
the 15 nursing sisters

who looked after the
wards of the hospital.

The record says, "Having respect
towards Margaret Blague,

"Matron, for her attendant and
constant great pains about the poor,

"in making them broths, cordials
and other light, comfortable things

"for their accommodation in
these late contagious times,

"wherein she has adventured herself
to the great risk of her life."

Wow, I love that.

She adventured herself to
the great risk of her life.

You know, there's a clear
understanding that she'd

put herself at risk
to care for patients.

Just like NHS nurses today.

Absolutely.

You definitely feel very
aware that the less paid,

less trained,
less valued health care workers

have stayed and
done the heroic work.

Absolutely.

Other physicians did
bravely stay in London

throughout the Great Plague.

One was William Boghurst,

an apothecary,
an early type of pharmacist.

He made a vivid record
of his attempts to treat

up to 40 patients a day.

He dressed buboes,

the swellings that
formed on necks and groins.

He held people as
they thrashed and raged,

overcome by
unimaginable pain and fever.

And he stayed with them
in their final hours,

closing their eyes when they died.

So apart from a handful of heroes,

almost everyone in
authority seems to have chosen

to abandon the poor of
London to their fate.

The outbreak was only
just beginning,

things were about to get worse
than anyone could imagine.

In mid-July, 1665,

the official number of weekly
deaths in London surpassed 1,000.

54 of the capital's 130
parishes were now infected.

With most aristocrats

and professionals
attempting to escape London,

it was mainly people
such as labourers and servants

who were left behind.

Before King Charles
fled to the countryside,

he handed responsibility
for plague relief and control

to the Lord Mayor of London,

who was based right here
at the Great Guildhall.

The Mayor was Sir John Lawrence,

a wealthy merchant who'd been
elected the previous year.

He now had to enforce regulations

to try and control the
spread of the disease.

One of the Lord Mayor's jobs was
to issue certificates of health

to the thousands of
people wanting to flee London.

Without these certificates,
they'd be turned away from inns,

they might even be turned away
from towns and villages by guards.

So thousands of
people gathered here,

desperate to prove they weren't
sick and to get their certificates.

The author Daniel Defoe
tells us there was no getting

to the Lord Mayor's door here
without exceeding difficulty,

such was the pressing
and the crowding.

But unfortunately,
those conditions are ideal

for the transfer of human body lice,

and many of the people
trying to escape the plague

may have caught it right here.

This is the great hall,

where the Lord Mayor
conducted business,

and it seems he took
sensible precautions

to avoid catching
the plague himself.

We're told the mayor had
a special gallery built.

He would stand on it,
keeping himself removed

from the mass of people
that had come to petition him.

It allowed him to be seen,
but at a suitably safe distance.

Sir John didn't know
plague was spreading

through body lice and human fleas,

but he had learned from experience
that social distancing worked.

And despite dealing with hundreds,
maybe thousands of people,

and working here
throughout the Great Plague,

Sir John lived for another 27 years.

It seems his gallery did the trick.

To control the spread,

the mayor had ordered the
shutting up of infected houses,

a system of quarantine established
in earlier plague epidemics.

It's the ancestor of the
measures used to combat Covid-19.

Searchers were employed to
visit houses where sickness

had been reported
to verify it was plague.

They carried a white stick
to identify themselves,

so everyone else could avoid them.

So many had lost their jobs
when employers fled London,

there was no shortage
of desperate people

willing to take on
this dangerous job.

If a plague victim was found...

..the house was locked up with
the entire family inside,

whether they were sick or not.

A red cross was then
painted on the door.

Along with the prayer,
"Lord, have mercy upon us."

Watchers then guarded
the house day and night,

to ensure no-one escaped.

Shutting up...

..would've been horrific
for the unfortunate families,

it would have been a
probable death sentence,

but it would have stopped the
disease spreading to other families.

But, just as with self-isolation
during the Coronavirus epidemic,

for the system to be effective,
it required compliance.

In 1665, people widely
concealed cases of plague,

to avoid being shut up,

and many others distracted
watchers and escaped.

The rejection of the system was
strikingly demonstrated here,

at the Ship Tavern in Holborn.

In the spring of 1665,

there was an outbreak of plague
in this 450-year-old tavern.

Now the landlord and his family
were shut up by the authorities,

a red cross was painted on the door

and watchmen were put on guard.

Well this did not go
down well with the locals,

who rioted to set them free.

It was reported that the door
was opened in a vicious manner,

and the people of the
house permitted to go abroad

into the streets,
promiscuously, with others.

Well this enraged the authorities,

who ordered that
the Justices of the Peace

inflict upon the rioters
the severest of punishments.

The failure of shutting up
to contain the epidemic was clear

as the death rate
spiralled ever higher.

No-one in the city was safe.

By the end of July 1665,

nearly 300 Londoners
a day were dying of plague.

The disease had spread
from the western suburbs

to almost every area of the city.

The northern suburbs of
Clerkenwell and Shoreditch

were now the worst hit.

The death toll reached 6,774.

Samuel Pepys was one
of the few wealthy elite

who had stayed in London.

Although still predominantly
affecting the poor neighbourhoods,

plague now reached his wealthy
parish of St Olave Hart Street.

He says he heard the death knell
ringing out from his church

five or six times a day.

Along with everyone else who could,

he self-isolated and
rarely left his home.

And this was just one of the ways
that the people who stayed in London

began to change their behaviour
in an effort to save themselves.

When they did have
to leave the house,

they tried to stay in
the centre of the street

to avoid getting infected
from the houses on either side.

And the streets became
increasingly deserted.

And if you did encounter anyone,
you tried to keep a safe distance.

People still needed
food and supplies

and some shops remained open.

The rich, like Pepys,
sent their servants.

Everyone instinctively
took precautions.

Morning. Morning, sir.

Can I get a shoulder
of lamb, please?

You certainly can.

Now, when people came to the
butcher shop to get fresh meat,

they had to put their
payment in coins into vinegar,

rather than handing
the money over directly.

There you go.

Vinegar does have
anti-bacterial properties,

although it's not
known if it kills plague.

Thank you very much, shoulder of
lamb's hanging just over there, sir.

The shopper would then take their
purchase directly off the hook,

avoiding any personal
contact with the butcher.

It's the same social distancing
we use in epidemic control today.

Although at the time,

people weren't sure how
plague was being transmitted,

through experience, they
knew to keep away from others.

And because body lice are
transferred by close contact,

this would have been effective.

Particularly extreme
precautions are believed

to have been taken by those
doctors that didn't leave London.

It's thought that they
wore a downright sinister

protective outfit when
visiting plague patients.

Raksha has gone to find out
if this outfit really existed

and how effective it may have been.

I've come to the London Dungeons.

Here, they have a replica of
a plague doctor's clothing

as part of their creepy
plague street experience.

But this outfit is so horrific,

I wonder if it's a myth,

part of the spooky
Halloween version of the plague?

To find out, I'm meeting historian
Doctor Philippa Hellawell.

Well, I'm not going to lie,
this scares the bejesus out of me.

I can see that it would be a
really good fancy dress costume,

but how is this based in reality?

So there are a lot of
sources from the 17th century

which suggests that plague
doctors walked around

in an outfit similar to this.

So where does this costume
actually originate from then?

It was developed by a French
physician called Charles de Lorme

who served three
successive French monarchs.

This is actually a German source

talking about the
use of this costume.

The gentleman here is
described as Doctor Beak.

So this outfit relates to the
very common theory of miasma,

which is the idea the
disease is caused through

poisonous vapours
going through the air.

And we can see that
reflected in the mask,

this kind of beaked
quality of the mask,

it's designed to actually
store sweet smelling substances,

perfumes, things like lavender,

which are designed to kind
of protect the wearer

from the bad, the poisonous,

foul smelling odours
from coming into the body.

And also we see that the majority
of the body is covered as well.

What was this all made out of?

So this would typically be
made out of cotton or linen,

which was sealed with wax.

I mean, it's quite
interesting, isn't it,

because in the 17th century, they
wouldn't have known about bacteria

being spread through lice and fleas.

And if this was covered in wax,
this would be a barrier.

They would just literally drop off,
it's pretty effective.

We do have a
17th century monk in Genoa

who is saying how wearing
something like this, you know,

protects him from being
bitten by fleas and lice,

and so it certainly had
its practical advantages.

Now I'm going to put this on.

Oop.

Do you know what,
it's quite effective,

cos it's sealed at the bottom.

I mean, you can't see very must,
but if you're got glass on that,

then it would protect you from
people sneezing on you, wouldn't it?

Mm-hm, yeah.

I think what comes through is
actually the logic of it all,

covering the skin
and covering the face,

having glasses,
lenses over your eyes

was seen as quite an effective way
to protect yourselves.

So as scary as this seems
and as ridiculous as it looks,

it's almost like
a modern day Hazmat suit.

I mean, it's quite
effective, isn't it?

There's definitely
method to the madness.

So while a version of this
outfit was worn in Europe,

there's no evidence doctors were
stalking the streets of London

wearing it.

No-one from the time mentions it,

and I think they probably would.

Coming up...

..the outbreak overwhelms
the authorities...

I think people find this whole
thing of large numbers of bodies

just being tossed in
together very, very disturbing.

..and spreads beyond the capital
to the rest of the country.

It's almost like
facing a certain death.

In the second week of August, 1665,

there were a shocking
3,880 plague deaths.

About 6% of Londoners
who'd stayed had now died.

It was still the poor northern
suburbs around Shoreditch

that were bearing the brunt,

and a majority of their
population were now falling sick.

The worst affected parishes
were also overwhelmed by dead,

some of them had to
somehow bury 600 people a week.

They didn't have the manpower
to collect all the bodies

or dig all the graves

and many of the churchyards
were completely full.

The Lord Mayor realised that soon,
thousands of bodies would be left

unburied in houses
and in the streets.

So a burial operation on an
almost industrial scale was begun.

Dozens of carters were
hired to collect the dead.

These dead carts patrolled
the streets at night.

A bell ringer walked
ahead to call to families

to bring out their dead,

but also to warn
others to steer clear

of the infected
corpses they carried.

These were then
transported to huge burial pits

that had been dug
outside the city walls.

According to Daniel Defoe,

one of the greatest
pits of all was dug here,

next to the Church
of St Botolph in Aldgate,

just outside the
old eastern city wall.

Daniel Defoe tells us
that this dreadful gulf

was actually beneath my feet.

It was 40 feet long, extending
almost to the end of the alley,

it was 15 feet wide, so
about the width of this alley,

and it was 20 feet deep.

They only stopped digging
when they hit the water table.

To find out who was
buried in this pit,

I'm meeting up again
with Vanessa Harding.

Hi, Vanessa, very nice to see you.

I've just been pacing out
the plague pit outside,

I think you've got the church
records from the same period.

Yes, these are the
registers for September 1665.

And what kind of things
are we seeing at that time?

This is one of the largest parishes,

and it's one of the
highest death tolls anywhere.

You start on this page,
this is the 8th of September,

this is one day, starts there.

Mm-hm. Runs right down this page,

something like 90 people
are buried in one day.

I mean, that's amazing. Yes.

So 90 deaths in a single day?

Yes.

There's no way you can put those
people in normal,

traditional graves and
have funerals, is there?

No, no.

They're not even burying
in coffins anymore.

And they're in mass graves?

They're in plague
pits at this point?

Most of them, yes.

It's clearly one of
the traumatic sides of

the epidemic as a whole,

is that it destroys the
ways in which people are used to

taking care of the dead,
paying proper respect,

being able to see them into a grave.

I think people find this
whole thing of large numbers

of bodies just being tossed in
together, very, very disturbing.

So Defoe says that
that huge pit out there,

in two weeks, it was
filled with bodies,

that they had 1,114
people in that pit.

Does that fit with the data
you've got from the register?

Absolutely, yes.

Wow.

So what do you see if you
look at the list of names here?

We can see that it's
right across the parish,

but they're also mostly
coming from the poorer areas,

from the alleys,
so it's Woolsack Alley,

Harrow Alley,
Three Kings Alley, Gravel Lane,

Squirrel Alley, Still Alley.

So the wealthier people would
have lived on the High Street?

Yes. And we don't see the High
Street coming up very much here.

Just one or two names.

This was because, by this time,

most of the rich houses on the
High Street would've been empty.

Because by midsummer, up to 20%
of London's population had fled.

By the end of August, a shocking
7% of those who remained had died,

and over 6,000 more
were dying each week.

Anyone who'd stayed in the city was
now losing friends and family.

Puritan Minister, Thomas Vincent,

remained in Spitalfields
throughout the plague

in a household of eight people.

He'd had 16 close friends
he used to see every week.

Now only four were left alive.

That August, from his window,

he witnessed terrible
scenes of tragedy every day,

including a woman forced to bury,
with her own hands, her last child.

You couldn't walk through
London that terrible August

without coming across
plague-ridden people

limping through the streets.

So Samuel Pepys
preferred to travel by boat

on the Thames to avoid the sick,

but he got a terrible
shock one evening,

coming up the steps from the river,

when he stumbled upon a
plague corpse in the darkness.

By midsummer, it's thought
that 80,000 people had fled London

and hundreds more were
holed up on boats,

lined all the way along the Thames,
as far as the eye could see.

But the countryside was
no longer a safe haven,

the refugees had taken
the plague with them,

and the epidemic would
spread across Britain.

I believe people fleeing
London had carried it with them

on their lice infested clothes.

Most towns near
London saw outbreaks,

infected goods were
blamed for causing

particularly severe epidemics in
the cloth making towns of Braintree,

Colchester and Norwich.

Most were in the south
and east of England,

but one outbreak stands
out from all the others.

Eyam is a picturesque
village, far from London,

tucked away in a valley deep
in the Derbyshire Peak District.

Even today,
it's miles from anywhere.

Looking at the village down there,

it couldn't be further removed
from the crowds and grime of London,

and that was a true
350 years ago as it is today.

But that pretty
village would suffer

one of the most terrible
outbreaks of the Great Plague

in all of Britain.

In the 17th century,
Eyam was home to about 700 people.

It was in these actual cottages that
the Great Plague arrived in Eyam

in the first week
of September, 1665.

And this was intriguingly early,

because it hadn't even reached some
parishes in London

at this point, and yet,

somehow it had jumped
all the way up here

to the heart of the Peak District.

And once again, the outbreak was
blamed on a consignment of cloth.

The story goes that
consignment was sent from London

to a tailor in Eyam.

A servant, George Vickers,

opened the box and
discovered the goods were damp.

He was ordered to dry
them out by the fire,

by doing this he
somehow, tragically,

contracted the plague.

In recent times, the story
has been dismissed as a myth.

The crucial question for me is
could plague really be spread

by shipments of cloth and clothing?

It's blamed in so many outbreaks,

and it only really makes
sense if you believe,

like I do, that the disease is
mainly spread by human clothes lice,

rather than by rats.

But any infected lice in the box

wouldn't have been able to feed,

there was no-one to suck blood
from.

So could they have survived
the many days it would have taken

a cart to travel
from London to Eyam?

Raksha has gone to find out.

She's at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

to meet Professor James Logan,

who's been running an
experiment on lice survival.

So we know that this box of damp
cloth arrived from London to Eyam.

What are the chances of
body lice actually surviving

in that consignment of cloth?

So basically, we wanted to find
out how long these guys can survive

when they're off the hosts.

It's very hard to
get hold of body lice,

so we've used head lice,
which are very similar.

So we managed to get some
head lice ten days ago.

We put them in an incubator
at their optimum temperature

and optimum humidity.

After 24 hours, about 80%
of them had actually died.

After two days 90% had died.

But by day five, there
was still one louse alive.

It was quite incredible. That's
remarkable, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

You know, we know head lice
tend not to survive as long as

body lice and, yet,
even in this experiment,

we've shown that one louse
could survive five days.

So with body lice, they'd be
surviving a good few days

beyond that as well,

so they would...I would be very
convinced that there would be lice

still alive, under those
conditions, in that box.

But there is potentially another
way that it could be transmitted,

and that's through their faeces.

There's one thing about
insects that feed on blood

and that's that they poo a lot.
Oh gosh, and that's that?

And you can see all the
poo on that piece of paper.

Let's have a look at
it under the microscope.

So you can see how
much poo there is there.

I mean, they're
absolutely minuscule,

you can barely see
an individual poo... Mm.

..with the naked eye. But there
you can see how many there are.

And inside that poo,
the bacteria can actually survive

and be transmitted onwards.

And basically, what happens,
because it's really, really dusty,

if you were to sort
of shake the cloth,

the poo would be airborne,

it could go into your lungs
and infect you that way,

or if you've got a cut on the skin,

the poo could get in that way, which
means the bacteria would get in

and that's another way
that the infection

possibly could have started.

This experiment has shown the
story of how the contagion spread

to Eyam may be true.

The box could have contained
lice infested clothes

from a plague victim,

or the person who packed
it could've been ill.

And even if no lice had survived,

their faeces may have infected
the servant, George Vickers.

And his death, shortly
after unpacking the box,

began a terrible chain
of events in Eyam.

We know from wills
and parish records

that the first person to die,
the servant George Vickers,

lived in that cottage there.

A fortnight later, Edward Cooper,
only four years old,

who also lived in
that cottage, died.

A day later, Peter Hawksworth,

their neighbour at that end, died,

and then a few days after that,

Thomas Thorpe and
his daughter, Mary,

the neighbours on
this side, also died.

This was only the
beginning for the villagers.

The disease
would continue to spread.

And we'll discover how it
led to an extraordinary act

of self-sacrifice by
the people of Eyam.

In London, the death
rate remained unrelentingly high.

By the 11th of September,

over 37,000 people had died.

In desperation, the
Lord Mayor ordered great bonfires

be lit in the streets,

in the belief that the smoke would
drive out the miasmas

thought to be spreading the disease.

Samuel Pepys watched in awe and
fear as they blazed across the city.

But, of course, it was hopeless.

The epidemic still
had not reached its peak.

In the first week
of September 1665,

bubonic plague was raging
through the streets of London.

The death rate in the city had
reached unprecedented levels.

Four months into the epidemic,

almost 7,000
Londoners a week were dying.

It had already killed
more than 30,000,

around 8% of the city's population.

Each week, the death rate
increased remorselessly,

with no end in sight.

With over 1,000 people
dying every single day,

the onslaught began to
overwhelm attempts to

cope with and control the outbreak.

The system of
shutting up was abandoned,

to the horror of Samuel Pepys.

Pepys saw people stumbling
through the streets

and was terrified he was coming into
contact with those who,

in his words, had plague upon them.

In his book,
A Journal of the Plague Year,

Daniel Defoe describes
the scenes that unfolded

on London streets
as order collapsed.

The account is thought to be based
on the experiences of his uncle,

Henry Foe.

We're told that at the
height of the outbreak,

Henry Foe was holed up in his house,

right here on Aldgate High Street,

it would've been
where the tube station is.

Now, like other better off people,

he lived on the wide main street,

but from his window, he could
see Harrow Alley, still here.

This was one of London's
infamous back alley slums,

where body lice and
human flea infestations

allowed the disease
to run rampant.

This is what Defoe tells us was
going on in this very spot

at the height of the plague.

"Scarce a day or night passed that
some dismal thing happened

"at the end of that Harrow Alley."

Which was a place full of poor.

"Throngs of people would burst
out, most of them women,

"making a dreadful clamour,
a mixture of screeches and crying."

On one occasion, Henry Foe saw
a man with plague overwhelmed

by insufferable pain,

run naked out here from Harrow Alley
and set off down the high street.

He was chased by five or
six women and children,

crying out for him to come back
and trying to persuade others

to help them stop him,

but no-one, not even his family,

was prepared to touch him.

Henry Foe, watching from
his window over there,

saw them all disappear
off down the street.

By September, the city
authorities were also struggling

to deal with the dead.

There weren't enough dead carts

to collect all the bodies
each night for burial,

a crisis made worse

because the carters themselves
were also dying of plague.

Desperate families resorted
to carrying their own loved ones

to the graveyards.

But many churchyards
were already full,

including the one outside
Samuel Pepys local church,

Saint Olave Hart Street.

This is the street where Pepys
was living in September 1665,

Seething Lane.

Now Pepys' home was just down there,

it's long gone,
replaced by modern buildings,

but his parish
church still survives.

This grim gate is the one
Pepys would have walked through

to get to his church.

But even this foreboding
gate paled in comparison

to what Pepys found
on the other side.

He tells us that so many
plague victims were buried here,

one on top of the other,

that the ground level actually rose,

and it frightened him so much,

he refused to walk through
the churchyard anymore.

Churchyards across London were
said to be three feet higher

than they were
before the Great Plague.

Incredibly, the level of this
churchyard is still raised,

I have to walk down these steps
to get into Pepys' church.

I'm meeting Vanessa Harding
to discover what the church's

burial registers reveal
about life in Pepys' parish

at the height of the epidemic.

These are the parish registers,
the burial registers,

from the period that Pepys lived
here, and its extremely good,

it's extremely rich in detail for
the period of the plague.

Unusually, the parish clerk marks
every single plague burial

with the letter P.

You can see the first page,
there are quite a few plague deaths,

but there are quite
a few that aren't,

but by the time we turn
the page and get into August

and then into September,

you can see that almost
every death is a plague death.

And people would have seen the
plague moving through a family.

Yes. Clearing an entire
household in a fortnight. Mm.

And presumably that's what you see
through the whole parish,

that the place begins to... Yeah.
..it feels like the apocalypse.

Yes, it, it must have done.
I mean particularly,

I think, in some ways
cos it's a wealthy parish,

people may have
thought they would escape.

I mean, it's, it's
overwhelmingly clear from this book

that once it gets going,

even in a wealthy parish
like this, no-one is safe,

that every part
of London is affected.

Yes, and there are some very
dramatic and tragic stories here.

So, for example,
on the 10th of September,

Zachary, the son of Edmund Poole,

died of plague
and was buried in the churchyard.

And then the next day,
his brother, Henry,

the son of Edmund Poole,
also died of plague.

Zachary was about 12,
and Henry was about 14.

I mean, quite hard to
think about as a parent,

Zachary is a year older than my son,

and in 24 hours,

Edmund Poole has
buried two of his kids.

That's right.

But I'm afraid it gets worse.

Just a few days later,
we have Elizabeth,

daughter of Edmund Poole,
and her brother,

Edward, son of Edmund Poole,
both of them died of plague,

20th of September.

And then we have, on the
21st of September, John,

the son of Edmund Poole,
buried in the churchyard.

All of these marked
as plague burials.

So in 11 days, Edmund Poole
has buried five of his children.

Yes, probably all
five of his children.

Yeah. We don't
think he had any more.

Wow.

And then, just a few days later,

on the 25th of September,

Edmund Poole himself dies of plague
and is buried in the churchyard.

Is there a mother?
Does he have a wife?

We know that his
wife's called Elizabeth,

and there is an
Elizabeth Poole, a widow,

living in the parish in
March the following year,

we find her as a householder.

So I think it's quite
likely she is the widow,

the mother of this family.

Almost worse to have survived it,

and having lost five
children and your husband.

Yes.

Wow.

Wow.

But the fatalities
were still rising.

In mid-September 1665,

four and a half months since the
epidemic began engulfing London,

the plague reached its peak.

In just one week,

between the 12th and
the 18th of September,

plague killed 7,165 Londoners.

Deaths were reported across
the city in 126 parishes.

And those are just
the official figures,

many cases of plague
were either misdiagnosed

or deliberately passed
off as something else.

The real figure for that week
was probably 10,000 cases,

more than 1,400 a day.

Death rates peaking in late summer
was a pattern seen in earlier

plague outbreaks in Britain.

The relationship between
the weather and the plague

was noticed by William Boghurst,

an apothecary who worked
here on Drury Lane

throughout the great plague,
where the outbreak began.

Now his shop would've
been a stall inside this pub.

It's not the original building,

but, in fact, there has
been a White Hart pub here

since the 15th century.

Boghurst noticed death rates
changed according to the seasons,

they increased if hot
conditions were followed by rain,

while frosty weather caused a
massive decline in fatalities.

This is the opposite of infections
like flu and coronaviruses.

It seems the plague thrived
in warm, humid conditions,

but it didn't like it too
hot, too cold or too dry.

The records show the summer
of 1665 was both hot and humid...

..weather conditions
that may have exacerbated

the severity of the epidemic.

In the week to the
25th of September,

5,533 Londoners died of plague.

Around 1,500 fewer
than the previous week.

It was a glimmer of hope
that the worst had passed.

William Boghurst was one
of the few medical men

left in London by this point.

Most doctors and surgeons
had joined the great exodus

of professionals
who'd fled the city.

At the time,
this cowardice horrified

the abandoned people of London.

But, because doctors didn't
then understand bacterial disease

and had no drugs to treat plague,

even the ones who stayed
didn't much help the situation.

John Sergeant had headed to the

Saint Bartholomew
Hospital Pathology Museum

to see what
treatments doctors attempted.

Among the 5,000 medical
specimens kept here,

there are some from 19th
century plague epidemics.

This is a rat
infected by the plague,

that's gruesome,
kept in formaldehyde.

And this is even more poignant,

this is a human lung
from a plague victim.

I'm meeting Kevin Goodman,

an expert in early
medicine and surgery,

who's collected a vast array of
17th century medical instruments.

Well, this is an amazing
collection of objects,

some of them, I must say,
rather sinister.

But these are all medical
tools of the trade at the time?

Yes.

So what does that do?
That's a fleam.

Now, a fleam was
normally used for bleeding,

for opening a vein.

For treatment of buboes,
you would perforate....

Right. ..the bubo.

So if you had the bubo here,
they'd just stick it in you?

Yes. God, but this is all
incredibly painful, eugh. Oh, yes.

OK, so how would
you get the pus out?

I would then heat a cup up,

place it on the bubo,

and then, as it cooled,

the vacuum would draw out all
the nasty pus full of germs.

Oh, right, right.

So you'd put this on.

So this would go
through there? Yeah.

And the idea is to break
the bubo, that's the bit?

Yeah. OK, right.

So they would think they
were doing something useful.

So what else have we got?
What are all these things here?

I've got a selection
of cauterising irons here.

Yu could heat that up,

place it into the middle
of the bubo to burn it.

Horrible, isn't it?

Making it so hot that
the flesh burns.

Yes, the pain would
have been agonising.

And don't forget, there's going
to be no pain control with this,

you had to just bite
down and endure it.

But would any of these
methods actually work?

No. If you're going to
start cutting into buboes,

or burning into them, you're going
to start letting out lots of

germ infested pus,

you're going to increase the
risk of other people catching it,

also you're increasing
the risk of infection.

Right, so actually, they're making
things worse with all this stuff?

Indeed. At the time,
people would be so fearful,

there would be so much terror
that they'd just sort of say,

give me anything
you can to help me,

because they were so desperate.

It is a time of desperation,
complete and utter.

I thought nothing could be
more terrible

than having the plague,

but it seems being treated
for it could've been worse.

While these 17th century
medical interventions

may have done more harm than good,

we're about to discover if other
methods for controlling plague

may have been more effective
than we ever imagined.

As the weather cooled
in the autumn of 1665,

plague deaths in
London continued to fall.

By mid-October, 4,500
fewer people a week were dying,

compared to a month earlier.

Most deaths were now
in the eastern parishes

of Aldgate and Whitechapel,

which were poorer parishes
outside the city walls.

The disease had passed like a wave,

from the west of
the city to the east.

In the western parishes,
where the outbreak began,

the vulnerable had already died,

and those who'd recovered now had
some resistance to the disease.

It's thought that up to
80,000 people had fled London,

20% of the population.

And among those who'd stayed,

about one in five had died.

For those still alive,

the city had changed
beyond all recognition.

This was observed by puritan
minister Thomas Vincent,

one of the few who continued
to preach to his congregation

and visit the sick.

He wrote that the terror of the
disease had broken societal bonds

and drained peoples
hearts of love and pity.

He was horrified to see families
abandoning their loved ones.

In Spitalfields,
his household of eight

had managed to escape the disease,

but then he tells us,

plague came in dreadfully upon them.

Over the course of two weeks,

three of his household
fell ill and died.

A story which was echoed in
thousands of homes across the city,

many of which now stood empty.

The Lord Mayor now had to somehow
deal with these infected houses.

I'm going to take a look
at the orders he issued,

detailing how they
should be disinfected.

I'm interested to
discover if the methods

would have been effective against
the human fleas

and body lice we now
know spread the plague.

There were instructions
about what to do

with these abandoned
infected houses.

And the first was to keep
them uninhabited for 40 days,

now that's very effective
against human body lice,

if they don't eat
for 40 days, they die.

But there were
other instructions as well.

Each infected house was to be fumed,

washed and whited with lime.

Now whited with lime means
whitewashed,

and fumed, we have a
description of what that is here.

And the recipe for fuming
is to take saltpetre,

amber, brimstone, each of two parts,

juniper one part,
mix them in a powder,

put thereof upon a red hot
iron or coals, a little at once.

A Frenchman, James Angier
had introduced this fumigation

recipe to London,

claiming the smoke successfully
decontaminated houses in Paris.

Now I'm very curious to know if
fuming or washing with lime

could possibly help
in controlling the plague.

It seems unlikely that whitewash,

commonly painted outside and inside
houses in the 17th century,

would have much effect
on the plague bacteria.

So Raksha's putting it to the
test with Doctor Sam Willcocks...

Hi, Sam.

..at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

So what we have here are
these three wooden tiles.

They're our pseudo 17th
century walls, aren't they?

That's right.

Sam coats each tile with
a spray of bacteria.

It's similar to plague, but not
deadly, and then allows them to dry.

This spray is going to simulate,

a cough or body fluids that
have landed on a surface.

We treat one with modern anti-bac,

one with water and
one with our limewash.

So, let's see if this works.

Then we swab down each one
and transfer them to agar plates

to see if any bacteria will grow.

Two days later, the results are in.

So here are the plates.

Ooh, let's have a look then.

That's our anti-bac.
That's right, this is our,

our household anti-bac spray.

And there's no colony
growth at all on that plate,

which is what we were hoping for.
It's clean as a whistle.

Our next plate was the sterile water
that we sprayed on to the tiles,

you can see some colonies growing
there quite nicely on the plates.

I can clearly see spots on that,
so that's the bacteria growing.

That's right, yeah.

Right, so what about
our final experiment?

OK. Well, the limewash did
kill all the bacteria.

I can't see any
colonies on there at all,

it's as good as the anti-bac
spray that we use nowadays.

It really is.

So they kind of knew what
they were doing, didn't they?

It worked, it worked.

I'm going to start
limewashing my kitchen now. Yeah.

THEY LAUGH

In the 17th century,

they wouldn't have
known how it worked,

but amazingly,
they'd learnt from experience.

Limewashing houses
controlled disease.

But what about fumigation?

Our experiment this
time is being carried out

in a very different location,

a farm shed on the South Downs,

by pyrotechnics expert, Mike Sanson.

Hello, Mike.
Hi, there, how you doing?

Talk about plague and pestilence,

you've definitely got
a flood here, haven't you?

I know, a shocking day, isn't it?

I don't say this very often,
but I've got fleas.

Oh, nice.

But what I wanted to do
is see if we can recreate

17th century fumigation.

I want to know if it was really
effective in killing fleas and lice,

cos we know that these are
the carrier of the plague.

Right, so I've got the
chemicals that I know were used

for fumigation in
the 17th century.

Brimstone, first of all, sulphur.

So, the reason it
was called brimstone

was because it was found
on the brim of volcanoes.

And then we've got the saltpetre,
potassium nitrate,

which is a strong oxidising agent.

And I know these two
burn really well together,

because they're the main
components of gunpowder.

They burn quite ferociously,

and then it produces quite a
noxious gas called sulphur dioxide.

Let's do it.

The shed will act as our
infected 17th century room.

It's a lovely little
shed you've got here.

The lid of the flea
container is a porous mesh

that will allow in the fumes.

So there's this plume of gas
coming out at a steady rate.

It's filling this whole
shed up now, isn't it?

Exactly, yeah.

They certainly don't look
very active now, do they? No.

Oh, I just saw one drop.

Oh, they're all dropping,
they're all dropping.

They're dropping like fleas.

Let's have a look. Yeah, right.

Ooh, smoky still. Whoa-ho.

Oh gosh, they're
definitely dead, aren't they?

I think that's worked really well.

It has.

I mean, it's pretty
spectacular, isn't it,

that in the 17th century,

they were using this
method to fumigate houses?

That is incredible. It's
a really effective insecticide.

They were getting rid of the things,

the fleas and the lice,

that were killing and passing
on the plague to other people.

Amazing.

They didn't know how it was working,

but this simple disinfection method

would have helped normality slowly
to return to London.

And in late October, 1665,
some life returned to the streets.

But things had changed.

Diarist Samuel Pepys says
he walked to the Royal Exchange

and heard only
conversations about who had died

and who was still ill.

He also tells us there
were still plague victims

in the streets.

Although, by now, the death rate
was heading steadily downwards.

From the September peak of
over PPLAUSE,000 deaths a day,

by October the 30th,

plague fatalities had dropped
to PPLAUSE,000 deaths a week.

The declining death rate
encouraged the many thousands

who'd fled to the countryside

to begin returning to London.

Daniel Defoe says they were tired
of being away from London so long

and were so eager to get back,

they flocked into the city here,
without any thought or fear.

This influx caused a brief spike
in deaths in early November,

because, as more people
came back to the city,

there were also more
people vulnerable

to catching the infection.

But, from mid-November,

plague deaths fell every week.

By mid-winter 1665,

the cold weather had reduced the
death rate to around 40 a day.

After a year,

the Great Plague epidemic in
London was coming to an end.

Finally, after Christmas,

King Charles and his court returned
to his palace at Westminster.

They'd spent most of
the year in Oxford,

which unlike many
towns in southern England,

hadn't seen a single case of plague,

and that's probably because
royal guards were posted

day and night on each
of the four bridges

that led in and out of town,
and they didn't let anyone in.

This was a highly
effective form of quarantine,

and King Charles seems to have
had a pleasant time in Oxford,

even managing to get one
of his mistresses pregnant.

But his abandonment of his
capital in its hour of need

didn't go down well
with its inhabitants.

While London had now seen
the worst of the epidemic,

the rest of the
country was not so lucky.

In the spring of 1666,

towns across Britain
were hit by plague again.

Like Oxford, many towns
around the country

tried to quarantine themselves.

They stopped all trade with London

and armed volunteers
prevented strangers

from entering towns and villages.

But they often weren't as
successful as the royal troops.

Plague, again,
swept through towns like

Colchester and Cambridge,

which had suffered
terribly the previous year.

And this time, the
outbreaks were even more severe.

But it was the villagers of Eyam,

deep in the Derbyshire
Peak District,

who would become famous
for their heroic response

to the disease.

I'm about to find out what they did.

In the summer of 1666,

a story of extraordinary
heroism and self-sacrifice

unfolded here in Eyam in Derbyshire.

The instigator was
the village vicar,

the Reverend William Mompesson.

When Mompesson realised that
winter hadn't put an end

to the outbreak in the village,

he sent his wife, Catherine,
and his children away

to stay with friends in Yorkshire.

But Catherine returned
to support her husband.

In late May, 1666,

Mompesson made a decision that
would have terrible consequences

for everyone in the village.

To discover what happened,

I'm meeting Joan Plant,

whose family have lived in
Eyam since the time of the plague.

Tell me about this extraordinary
decision made by Mompesson?

He'd seen instances of
plague in the country before.

He got together with
the previous minister,

Stanley, and they made a plan.

They would close the church,

close the churchyard
and close the village.

And this is what Mompesson
had to ask the village to do,

simply to contain the disease.

And they agreed,
which was just incredible.

What does that mean to
close a village back then?

Well, it means you put a
border the whole way round,

nobody goes, comes in,
and nobody goes out.

Tell me about the significance
of this particular place.

So Mompesson's Well is
a running water well,

and this was the northern boundary
point when they closed the village.

And the village people
would leave money here

for the provisions that would
be brought along the road

from the Earl of Devonshire
and surrounding villages.

Families could have chosen
to flee the infected village

to save themselves,
just as happened in London.

But, incredibly, they chose to stay,

hoping to prevent
the disease spreading

and so save the
neighbouring villages and towns

from the same fate.

I think the older I get,

the more I think about
that and think how brave

and courageous they must have been.

Because it's almost like
facing a certain death.

The villagers knew the terrible
sacrifice they were making,

because dozens of their
neighbours had already fallen ill,

and the contagion was accelerating.

The price they paid
for their selfless decision

can be seen in the
parish church registers.

So this is the record
of deaths in Eyam during

the period of the plague.

So you can see here, it says,
"Here follows the names with

"the numbers of persons
who died of the plague."

And we start with the first victim,

George Viccars,
on September the 7th of 1665.

But it really gets going in
the summer of the next year.

If I turn to June,

we see we've got 21 deaths,

then in July, there are 58 deaths,

and then turning to August,

we get 80 deaths.

This entire page...

..filled with families
completely wiped out.

In a small village,
it's extraordinary,

and that trajectory is
the same thing we saw

in London in the summer
of the previous year.

Of course, it's an
extraordinary document

in terms of public health,
in terms of data,

about how the epidemic spread.

But the other thing that's so
overwhelming when you look at it,

is the number of deaths
in a small community.

All these people
friends and family,

it must have been absolutely
horrific living through this,

completely terrifying.

This isolated burial plot

on a hillside
overlooking the village

gives some sense of the
horrific scale of these tragedies.

I'm visiting with
Doctor Lilith Whittles,

whose investigated if the
plague in Eyam was spread here

in the same way as
it spread in London.

Seven members of the Hancock
family are buried here,

near where they lived.

Six children and their father,

who all died within
one week of each other.

Only the mother,
Elizabeth, survived.

It's a pretty bleak image, isn't it?

Elizabeth Hancock up here,

she's not doing fancy
gravestones or anything,

she's digging holes and dragging
her family members into them.

Yep. And there's no funeral, there's
no vicar, there's no mourners.

Nope. It's just her.

Well, the social distancing measures
that the villagers had taken

meant that they weren't
coming to funerals

and weren't helping out
in burials, they couldn't.

So what you're able to do
with a computer is simulate

what if the epidemic
was spread by rats,

what if it was spread
in different ways,

and to figure out what the most
likely way of it spreading was.

Exactly that. And what do you find?

The most likely explanation
for the transmission

was the plague being transmitted
from human to human through

ectoparasites, such as
human lice and human fleas.

For a long time,
there's been this story that

the villagers of Eyam

kind of pointlessly quarantined
themselves.

They'd quarantined
themselves against a disease

that was not spread by humans,
it was spread by rats.

Yep. And actually your modelling
suggests that what they did

was really important.
Absolutely.

If the plague was spread
by human to human contact,

through their ectoparasites,

then by distancing themselves
from the surrounding area,

they stopped the spread of plague
to places like Sheffield,

where if an infected person
had started an outbreak there,

we could have seen many,
many more deaths,

like we did in the
London, outbreak.

So I kind of imagine
Elizabeth Hancock up here,

digging these graves and I guess,

now, at least, we can see she is
doing something really important,

she saved a lot of lives.

Absolutely, they all did something
extraordinary, the villages of Eyam.

Wow.

So now we know Eyam's
quarantine was both heroic

and worthwhile.

The village's last
plague victim was buried

on the 1st of November 1666.

In total, 257 people
died of the disease,

about 40% of the population.

William Mompesson, the vicar who
instigated the village's quarantine

also paid a heavy price.

His wife, Catherine,

who'd returned to support her
husband's work in Eyam,

died of plague in August.

As the vicar's wife, she was the
only person allowed

to be buried in the churchyard.

While the plague raged in
Eyam in the summer of 1666,

London was reporting few cases.

Fatalities had dropped by 95%,

and life was returning to normal.

But then, unbelievably,

the capital was hit
by another tragedy.

In September, the Great Fire
destroyed much of the walled city.

Although it's widely believed that
this burnt the plague out of London,

the statistics suggest
it was a coincidence.

The epidemic was already ending
by the time the flames took hold.

We'll never know for certain
how many Londoners died

during the Great Plague,

but the official estimate of around
70,000 is undoubtedly too low.

Many cases of plague
were misidentified

and many burials went unrecorded.

So it's actually thought that
over 100,000 Londoners

died during the plague.

That's around a
quarter of the population.

The last plague death
recorded in London was in 1679,

and there were no other outbreaks
in Britain until the early 1900s,

when the third plague
pandemic swept the world.

From 1900, there were
plague deaths in port towns,

including Glasgow,
Cardiff and Liverpool.

The most recent plague outbreak
in Britain was in Suffolk in 1918.

None of the outbreaks of plague in
20th century Britain

turned into epidemics,

and that's because modern
hygiene means that

there aren't the body lice
or the human fleas around

to fuel the spread.

But plague isn't the
only pandemic we face,

and, in fact, Coronavirus itself is
only one of the many diseases

that have swept the world
since the 17th century.

Through most of human history,

disease has killed far more
than war or natural disasters.

Epidemics like cholera,

smallpox and tuberculosis
killed hundreds of millions

in the 20th century alone.

Modern medicine has helped
bring about a massive reduction

in these ancient pandemic diseases.

But, as Covid-19 reminds us,

new diseases emerge all the time.

And in fact, with modern travel,

population growth
and environmental destruction,

we now face more
outbreaks than ever before.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu
killed up to 50 million people.

Since 1980,
we've suffered SARS, MERS,

Ebola and the deadliest, AIDS,

which has so far killed an
estimated 32 million people.

And now there's Covid-19.

The methods that we
use to respond initially

to these disasters are
the same ones we used

during the Great Plague,
quarantine and social distancing.

But we now also have modern science,

which has successfully controlled
and, in some cases, defeated

almost every disease
humanity has faced.

New diseases will
continue to emerge,

but unlike our ancestors
during the Great Plague,

we are now in a much
better position to fight back.

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