A 17th century Londoner might one day notice a dark, gangrenous looking pustule on his leg which grew. It would soon be joined by black blotches all over the skin caused by haemorrhages underneath, and buboes - apple-sized swellings in his groin and armpits. He’d swiftly fall into a high fever and experience terrible thirst and pain, perhaps with bleeding which would last for 5 or 6 days before he died in agony - and either alone, or perhaps locked into his house with the rest of his family whether they were infected or not, and if they weren’t already it was often tantamount to a death sentence.

The Black Death is thought to have originated in Asia, and was gradually spread west by black rats on shipping routes. It was not the rats themselves that were the source of the infection of course, but the flea who lived and feasted on their blood. Despite a physician floating this theory behind the disease in 1630, the rat-connection was not recognised, and people thought that plague was spread by the breath from person to person, and so the best option would be flight - which was only an option for the wealthy. Many Londoners carried herbs or flowers in an attempt to avoid the plague breath.

When you consider the conditions in which many Londoners lived - densely packed in close into poorly-lit, badly ventilated, dirty spaces, it’s no wonder that the black rats and their fleas were able to thrive.

Attempts to halt the spread of plague had been ineffectual, and sometimes even damaging. Chewing tobacco was meant to help ward off plague, or trying to become infected with syphilis. London’s cesspools were opened up in the hope that the stench might drive the disease away. Cats and dogs were slaughtered (approximately 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats according to Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Year), who might have otherwise helped limit the spread of the disease by keeping the rat population down.

On the 16th October 1665 Pepys wrote in his diary this lament: But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets, full of sores, and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that. And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead—but that there are great hopes of a decrease this week: God send it.

London’s graveyards were overflowing, and Pepys remarked on how high the burial ground at St Olave’s Hart had become as more and more victims were buried there. 75,000-100,000 Londoners died - about a fifth of the population. To put that into perspective, if a fifth of London’s population were wiped out today, that would be 1,500,000 dead.

And what of the end of the plague? It’s thought that the Great Fire of London helped halt plague, though it’s now thought that it’s possible that the black rats became immune to the disease, and fleas ceased to snack on humans and infect them as there was a plentiful supply of rats. Perhaps comfortingly, the black rat is now comparitively rare, having been supplanted in London by the brown rat. Before you relax entirely, the brown rat is definitely NOT a rarity in London - I watched one scuttle across the path at Alexandra Palace just last week.

Here are some ratty stats for you:
- There are more than 60m rats in the UK.
- At least 1 in 20 properties is infested with them (1995 National Rodent Census).
- At least 4,000 rats are born every hour in London.
- Rats’ urine can infect humans with Weil’s disease, which can be fatal. It can be caught through contact with rat’s urine in water. However, don’t panic unduly - according to the River and Lake Swimming Associatioon in 1999 and 2001 there was only one death from Weil’s disease in England and Wales.
- The enamel on rats’ teeth is stronger than industrial diamonds, so yep, they can chew through pretty much anything - even masonry!

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Tags: black death, London, london history, pepys, plague, rats, st olaves hart

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under London History & Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.