the Black Death is scary
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The bodies piled up faster than they could be buried.
One of the consequences of the fact that London is
so cramped
is that Churchyards can't get any bigger
and loads of burials are happening
in a very small space. And here in the Churchyard
of St. Olafs, we can see how high the burial
ground has risen
above the level of the Church.
So that when I'm standing in the Church porch way here
the burial ground is about up to here.
The epidemic was about the worse that anyone could remember. At this rate the whole of London would be dead by Christmas.
Then in September, a cause for hope. A possible preventative emerged. Fumigation.
 
 
 
 
James Entier, who is a
celebrated authority on fumigation.
He persuades the Privy Council to let him.
have an experiment in high Holburn where he burns
qualities of saltpetre
brimstone, and amber. And I think
the stench must have been so astonishing
that only a rat with a vestige of
sense mechanism in its body would have fled,
and I think that kind of treatment may well have worked.
Hearing positive reports of the methods,
the King ordered fumigation to be tried, on a
vast scale.
Every six houses on each side of the way are to join together to provide one great fire
before the door of the middlemost inhabitant.
It was a monumental undertaking
involving the whole city.
Hundreds of cauldrons of coal were
bought at great expense.
All over London, plague was to be smoked out once and for all.
Great fires, burning aromatic incense blazed
across the city
There was at last a reason to believe that the disease
could be defeated.
But cruelly, the weather changed.
After the fires had burned for three days
the rain came.
The fires were extinguished.
The next night, more than 4000 died.
So many were dying, that it was now
impossible to keep track.
Jospeh Penny's father, William
died without any burial record.
A man who had spent his life giving others a decent burial
was carried away on a cart to be disposed of
in a common pit.
They take these dead carts through
often very narrow streets, and they
have either slings or boards
that they go into the house and bring people out.
It's probably one of the most vastly thoughts in the world
of these, of people going down
crying out "Bring out your dead".
So you really never know
where your dear, dear departed
relative, friend, lover
where they were going to end up,
and you were not allowed out of that house.
so off they went on a dead cart to
who knows where.
Before the plague, the Parish of St. Dunstan
had a population of about 3000.
In the six weeks at the height of the plague
Joseph Penny buried 500 of his fellow parishoners.
In seven pits.
"Sixteenth of August - Four pits"
"First of September - Two pits"
Fourth of September, Joseph Penny paid for
planks to cover the pits that the visited poor were buried in.
There are no markings today to show
where London's plague pits were.
The mass graves were dug and filled so fast
there was no time to place memorials.
Rector John Gheer ordered a plague pit
dug in Covent Garden
for four pounds and nine shillings.
It took sixty man days to dig
The Rector looked into it, and prayer
it would be the last.
It was the first of five.
The plague was killing faster than the corpses could be buried.
London suffered, the noysome stench
arising from the great number of the dead.
The broad gate development
which is on the northern fringe of the City of London
is on a site
which was called "The New Churchyard" in the early modern period.
It was founded in 1569
to take plague burials, it was used in
every successive plague and indeed in all the intervening years
and certainly a lot of people were being buried there.
 
Every time theres been excavation on that site
both when they put through Broadstreet,
the overground railway line, when they did the underground
and when they demolished the station in order to build
Broadgate itself,
they found large numbers of bodies.
In October, Joseph Penny died
The shovels and basket,
that were the tools of the grave makers trade
were returned to his mother.
The plague faded as fast as it had begun.
Winter was approaching,
the cold was killing the plague bacillus.
With the first frosts,
the worst seemed to be over.
Many of those who had left now returned to the city.
John and Elizabeth Davis now came back to the alley
where they helped nurse the sick.
Paid John Davis for keeping
of Elizabeth Phelps who died of the visitation.
But some of the refugees returned too quickly
Those who had survived the worst of the epidemic
seemed to have acquired some immunity to the disease.
Those who returned had none,
and presented the plague with a new opportunity.
The number of deaths rose again in December.
The city feared the disease would never relinquish its grip.
But it proved to be a false alarm.
There were fewer and fewer cases as winter set in.
It was soon safe enough for Parliament to return.
The Lord Mayor gave up his elaborate glass case.
By February, when the King returned
people knew the epidemic was over.
White crosses were painted over red to show that
a house had been free of infection for forty days.
People emerged into the streets again.
All had suffered,
but the poor most of all.
The editor of the only London newspaper of the time
reported:
"I do not find this visitation to have taken away
in or about the city
any person of prime authority and command"
 
For the people of Cock and Key alley
1665
was a year from which they would never recover.
 
Twelve of the twenty houses were afflicted with plague.
Eleven of the twelve were shut up.
Over half the people living there died.
The street's final death toll was 36
men, women and children.
"In many houses,
half the family is swept away.
And in some the whole, from the eldest to the youngest."
"Few escape with the death of but one or two,
never did so many husbands and wives die together."
"Never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave."
At the end of 1665,
the only member of the Penny family still alive
was Elizabeth.
She'd lost her three sons, and her husband.
She could not carry on the family trade of grave digging,
the parish did what they could for her.
Henry Dorset, the Church warden,
bought back the tools of the grave makers trade.
"Three shovels and a basket, four shillings"
 
 
 
