The Great Plague: How The Deadly Medieval Disease Consumed Britain

0:00:00 The Beginning Of The Plague
In 1665, the Great Plague swept through Britain, leaving devastation in its wake. Beginning in London, the deadly disease claimed over 100,000 lives in the city alone, fueled by cramped slums, poor hygiene, and mysterious methods of transmission. Families were torn apart, fear gripped the nation, and death seemed unstoppable as the epidemic spread beyond the capital.

0:43:11 Attempting To Stop The Spread
The disease spread primarily through human fleas and body lice rather than rats, leading to widespread fear and desperate containment measures such as locking infected households, social distancing, and mass burials. Wealthy citizens fled, leaving the poor to suffer, while some doctors and nurses risked their lives to provide care. Infected clothing carried the plague to rural areas, where entire villages made extraordinary sacrifices to prevent further transmission.

1:26:50 The End Of The Plague
With next to no doctors left in London, treatments were largely ineffective, relying on bloodletting, herbal remedies, and bizarre practices like strapping chickens to sores. Dead carts could no longer keep up with the mounting bodies, and many churchyards were full with families resorted to carrying their deceased loved ones to burial grounds themselves. Samuel Pepys described his local churchyard’s ground rising due to the sheer number of bodies buried on top of each other. By October 1665, plague deaths steadily declined due to cold weather and then in September 1666, the Great Fire of London decimated the city, destroying many of the areas where the disease thrived.

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