On September 2, 1666, shortly
after midnight, a fire
broke out at a bakery on Putting
Lane in the city of London.
High winds spread
the flames quickly.
And by the time all was said
and done, 80% of the city
would be consumed.
Today we're going to take a look
at what happened immediately
after London was destroyed
by the great fire of 1666.
But before we get started, be
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OK, off to London and the
year of the devil, 1666.
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In 1666, England was at war with
both the French and the Dutch.
When the fire
destroyed the city,
many assumed it was a deliberate
precursor to an invasion by one
of those powers and a wave
of anti-immigrant violence
broke out.
A Dutch bakery was
attacked by a mob.
A Frenchman was brutally
beaten with an iron bar.
And a Swedish diplomat
only narrowly avoided
being hanged thanks to
a quick intervention
by the Duke of York.
One specific rumor
that was spread
was that the French had started
the fires using explosives.
The rumor would spark a wave
of Anti-French violence.
Several people were
killed or injured,
including a French
woman attacked
by a mob that believed she
had explosives in her apron.
And a Frenchman was
attacked because the tennis
balls he was carrying
were mistaken for bombs.
By the time the fire
was extinguished,
80% of the area within
the city's medieval walls
was completely destroyed.
Only a few stone ruins
remained and 65,000 people
had been left homeless.
Complicating the matter was
that in the immediate wake
of the fire the ground
was too hot to walk on.
This left the homeless
population with little option
but to camp in the fields
outside of the walls.
As time passed,
more and more began
to pick up and travel to
other parts of the city
or to other cities
and villages entirely.
The severe housing shortage
had predictable results.
Rents in London shot
through the roof.
Within days, leasing
costs had gone up 200%.
And within weeks, the price of
a house had increased tenfold.
The high prices would
become the new normal
for the next several years.
Even London's
merchants and tradesmen
had little choice but to
pay these incredible rates
to their landlords.
Shortly after the fire,
26-year-old Robert Hubert,
the son of an
English watchmaker,
was arrested trying
to flee the country.
He quickly confessed
to the police
that he was a member of a French
gang bent on destroying London
and that he had started the
great fire on their behalf.
Content they had
caught the culprit,
Hubert was put on trial.
However, when the trial
arrived Hubert story changed
and inconsistencies
began to emerge.
Evidence showed that Hubert
wasn't even in London
when the fire started.
You would think this
would be a severe blow
to the prosecution's
case, but it wasn't.
Hubert was declared guilty and
sentenced to death by hanging.
His execution was carried out
just weeks after the fire.
Attacking immigrants
and scapegoating
those who are
obviously not guilty
was only the beginning
of the paranoia.
The destruction also
exacerbated pre-existing schisms
in London society, like
the longstanding animosity
between the Protestants
and Catholics.
Shortly after the
fire, the government
set up an official
committee to investigate
the cause of the outbreak.
The committee took
testimony from the public.
And much of it
was squarely aimed
at placing the blame
on the Catholics.
A man named William
Tisdale testified
he heard an Irish papist warn
that September 1666 would bring
a sad desolation to London.
A man from Radcliffe swore
that months before the fire
he heard a Catholic musing over
whether London might burn down
in '66, and that was just
the tip of the iceberg.
The suspicion that Catholics
were behind the fire
would last for
well over a decade.
As late 1681, local ward erected
a plaque which read, here
by the permission
of heaven, hell
broke loose upon
this Protestant city
from the malicious hearts
of barbarous papists.
The plaque was left up
well into the middle
of the following century
and was finally removed,
not because it
was anti-catholic,
but because people
stopping to read it
were creating a traffic hazard.
If you're thinking
that after all
the paranoid finger-pointing,
the discovery of the true cause
of the fire would
restore sanity,
then you just don't know the
people of medieval London
well enough yet.
As the facts came together,
it became apparent
that the fire had
started in a bakery
and then spread from
Pudding Lane to Pie Corner.
This led the city's
preachers to blame the town's
collective sweet tooth and warn
that God would send more fires
if the gluttony did not end.
Seriously, we're
not making this up.
They even erected a statue
known as the Golden Boy
of Pie Corner at the
site to remind Londoners
to avoid being gluttonous.
The fire changed
everything in London,
including how the city would
fight fires in the future.
At the time, the chief method
used to combat such fires
was to create firebreaks
by demolishing buildings
in the flames path, thus
starving it of fuel.
But the fire of '66
spread too quickly
to make the
firebreaks effective.
Exacerbating the problem
was that the city's water
flowed through wood
pipes, which were
fine under normal conditions,
but disastrous when the city
was erupting in flames.
Following the disaster,
London would go on
to create a much more formidable
system of fire defense.
This effort included new laws
and technologies, the creation
of a fire brigade, and the
placement of fire plugs
throughout the city.
It was a big step in
the right direction.
The great fire of 1666
destroyed landmarks
like St Paul's Cathedral and
the Royal Exchange, along
with over 13,000 homes
and 87 parish churches.
All told, the damages
were estimated
in the area of 10
million pounds, which
is the modern equivalent
of well over two
and a half billion US dollars.
Under the Fire of
London Disputes Act,
the government quickly
set up a special court
whose sole purpose was
to settle disagreements
between landlords tenants
and other occupants
of burned buildings.
Unfortunately, the court
proved a bit landlord friendly
and had a habit of ruling that
homeowners and tenants still
had to pay rent on homes
that had been destroyed
or otherwise rendered
uninhabitable.
As surely as hard rain makes
people want to buy umbrellas,
a great fire makes everyone
want to buy fire insurance.
Sure enough, a London
physician named
Nicholas Barbon created the
first fire insurance company
in the wake of the disaster.
The company, like its
modern day counterparts,
promised to reimburse
policyholders for damages
from future fires.
The great fire itself
became its advertisement,
as he told the public their
losses would have been
compensated if they had
had a policy like the one
he was selling.
And there were more benefits to
being a policyholder than that.
Barbon's company had employed
a private fire brigade.
Protected houses would
be given a fire-mark.
And if a fire broke
out, the company
would send the
Brigade out to save
any homes that bore the mark.
Those that didn't bear the
mark would be allowed to burn.
When London set out
to rebuild, they
sought to avoid many of
the mistakes of the past.
The London building act
of 1667, set new standards
for construction and would
shape the look of the city
for centuries to come.
The new law forbid
fire friendly materials
like wooden facades
and thatched roofs.
It also regulated the width and
shapes of the London streets
in ways designed to make
protecting the city from fire
easier.
The glut of new
regulations would
be enforced by a special
team of surveyors
that the new law
provided funding for.
These men would be the world's
first real building inspectors.
St Paul's Cathedral
was a London landmark.
And during the fire,
Londoner's trying
to save their own property
stacked their furniture
inside the churchyard.
Fortunately, this only
supplied fuel to the flames
and the cathedral was
completely destroyed.
When it was all over the church
turned to architect Christopher
Wren to redesign and
rebuild St. Paul's.
Wren had actually already
been working with the church
and had only recently submitted
his plans for improving
the existing architecture.
Now he would need to
start from scratch.
Wren would dedicate
the rest of his life
to rebuilding the cathedral
and was buried there
when he died in 1723.
It was no secret that
London would need
to be rebuilt after the fire.
And there was no
shortage of competition
for people who wanted to be
in charge of the rebuilding
efforts.
Within mere days of the
fire, King Charles II
was already receiving
multiple plans
for rebuilding from the likes
of architect Christopher
Wren, the guy who would rebuild
St. Paul's, natural philosopher
Robert Hooke, who you might
remember from biology class
as the man who discovered cells,
and the prominent surveyor,
Peter Mills.
Charles, for his
part, was concerned
that it was impractical to
select the plan before taking
an accurate survey of the city.
As such, he rejected all of the
offers and ordered that survey.
Within four short years of
the fire, the people of London
had already replaced
6,000 of the 13,000 homes
that had been destroyed.
Everything was built
in strict accordance
with the new building codes.
Whereas medieval London
was built from wood,
the new city was made
from brick and stone.
And where the old city
had thatched roofs,
the new one would
have tiled roofs.
The size of homes
also increased.
The new code forbid the
height of new buildings
to exceed four stories.
So rich merchants took to
buying larger plots on which
to build their mansions.
In 1671 the city
began the process
of erecting a monument to
the Great Fire of London.
Designed by Christopher
Wren himself,
the monument stands close to the
spot on which the fire started.
The monument
memorialized the fire
but also stands as a reminder
that the people of London
eventually triumphed
over the disaster
and ultimately survived.
An inscription on the
south panel of the monument
reads, haste is seen everywhere.
London rises again.
Whether with greater speed
or greater magnificence
is doubtful.
Three short years
complete, that which was
considered the work of an age.
Have you been affected
by a natural disaster?
Let us know in the
comments below.
And while you're at it, check
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