How Did Londoners Die in the 1600s?

Examining a Bill of Mortality from 1665

In the 1600s London was a mostly filthy, overcrowded city. It was much, much smaller than the massive conurbation that it has developed into today. Streets were narrow, and rickety wooden buildings were packed into these alleyways, with progressive building upwards and outwards. If you looked above your head on some streets, it would be hard or impossible to see the sky, because the upper levels of buildings would meet above your head, blocking your view. The situation was so dire that in 1666 a spark from a small bakery would trigger a massive five day long fire which destroyed over one third of all buildings in the city. Remarkably, fewer than ten people actually lost their lives. It was plague, not fire, that was the great leveller of 17th century London.

The Great Plague of 1665

Having first arrived on British shores in 1348 as the Black Death, killing as much as half the population at that time, the plague had returned frequently, and the Great Plague of 1665 killed approximately one-quarter of London’s population within a year. A pathogen carried by fleas that lived on black rats, the flea would often jump to a human when its host died. One bite and within days the egg-sized swellings or buboles that developed in the armpits were a sign that…