Some Amazing Facts About the Great Plague of London 1665

The great plague of London is one of the darkest days London has ever witnessed in its history. It started in 1665 and the plague wiped out almost half of London's population in roughly 18 months. It is estimated that there died 100,000 of plague during the distemper. Here today i will tell you some of the gross facts from that period.

During the plague the city authorities have imposed a quarantine rule that if any member of a house is reported to have plague the whole house was sealed with "a cross on the door" and sometimes accompanied with the words "Lord have mercy on us". no one in the hose was allowed to leave neither anyone was allowed to enter the house. Moreover two guards were appointed at each house, one for the night and one for day and if the members of the house are in need of any provisions they will give the money to the guard who will lock the door from the outside and fetch the items.

In the days during the time of the plague year dead carts, as called by the people of that time roam the streets of London calling "Bring out your dead" so that houses under lock down can bring out the bodies of their dead. The workers load the bodies on the dead cart and lead them to the pits where they dump all of them.

A few people during the plague whose all family had died of the distemper and is the last one left or who did not wanted to put their family members to undergo the painful moment of handing over their bodies to the dead cart, tends to bury themselves. it was seen that during the night when the workers are dumping the dead bodies into the pits right after which they will cover them with ground, some people came wrapping themselves with a sheet of cloth running towards the pit in which they dump themselves.

when the plague become uncontrollable it was not evident but believed that cats and dogs might also be spreading the distemper. Due to which it is estimated that almost 40,000 dogs and 200,000 were killed during the plague year. Almost 200 years later it was that we come to know that is was spread through a bacterium in rat fleas and cats and dogs might have helped at that time by reducing population of rats.

It was at that time thought that plague was caused due to bad air. so the people started to take some measures accordingly in several ways.

• Doctors advised the people to fumigate their houses in order to keep away bad smell.
• The city authorities ordered bonfires to be kept burning continuously day and night to eliminate any sort of distemper in air.
• People believed that keeping flowers to the nose and breathing through them will not allow the plague to enter the body.
• Workers started smoking tobacco to keep themselves safe from plague and later on it was said that no tobacconist of London died of plague.