The Great Plague

Offers a narrative history of the Great Plague which struck England in 1665-66. This title is illustrated with over 80 contemporary images.

The Great Plague is a thrilling story of a young girl during the epidemic of 1665. It's 1665, and Alice is looking forward to being back in London. But the plague is spreading quickly, and as each day passes more red crosses appear on doors. When her aunt is struck down with the plague, she is forced to make a decision that could change her life forever... Alice's chilling diary brings alive one of the darkest moments in British history: the Great Plague of 1665-1666. Experience history first-hand with My Story in this all-new look!

An intimate portrait of the Great Plague of London. In the winter of 1664-65, a bitter cold descended on London in the days before Christmas. Above the city, an unusually bright comet traced an arc in the sky, exciting much comment and portending "horrible windes and tempests." And in the remote, squalid precinct of St. Giles-in-the-Fields outside the city wall, Goodwoman Phillips was pronounced dead of the plague. Her house was locked up and the phrase "Lord Have Mercy On Us" was painted on the door in red. By the following Christmas, the pathogen that had felled Goodwoman Phillips would go on to kill nearly 100,000 people living in and around London—almost a third of those who did not flee. This epidemic had a devastating effect on the city's economy and social fabric, as well as on those who lived through it. Yet somehow the city continued to function and the activities of daily life went on. In The Great Plague, historian A. Lloyd Moote and microbiologist Dorothy C. Moote provide an engrossing and deeply informed account of this cataclysmic plague year. At once sweeping and intimate, their narrative takes readers from the palaces of the city's wealthiest citizens to the slums that housed the vast majority of London's inhabitants to the surrounding countryside with those who fled. The Mootes reveal that, even at the height of the plague, the city did not descend into chaos. Doctors, apothecaries, surgeons, and clergy remained in the city to care for the sick; parish and city officials confronted the crisis with all the legal tools at their disposal; and commerce continued even as businesses shut down. To portray life and death in and around London, the authors focus on the experiences of nine individuals—among them an apothecary serving a poor suburb, the rector of the city's wealthiest parish, a successful silk merchant who was also a city alderman, a country gentleman, and famous diarist Samuel Pepys. Through letters and diaries, the Mootes offer fresh interpretations of key issues in the history of the Great Plague: how different communities understood and experienced the disease; how medical, religious, and government bodies reacted; how well the social order held together; the economic and moral dilemmas people faced when debating whether to flee the city; and the nature of the material, social, and spiritual resources sustaining those who remained. Underscoring the human dimensions of the epidemic, Lloyd and Dorothy Moote dramatically recast the history of the Great Plague and offer a masterful portrait of a city and its inhabitants besieged by—and defiantly resisting—unimaginable horror.

During Medieval times, the Black Death wiped out one-fifth of the world's population. Four centuries later, in 1665, the plague returned with a vengeance, cutting a long and deadly swathe through the British Isles. In this title, the author focuses on Cambridge, where every death was a singular blow affecting the entire community.

The Great Plagueis a thrilling story of a young girl during the epidemic of 1665. It's 1665, and Alice is looking forward to being back in London. But the plague is spreading quickly, and as each day passes more red crosses appear on doors. When her aunt is struck down with the plague, she is forced to make a decision that could change her life forever... Alice's chilling diary brings alive one of the darkest momentsin British history: the Great Plague of 1665-1666. Experience history first-hand with My Story in this all-new look!

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the plague *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "The trend of recent research is pointing to a figure more like 45-50% of the European population dying during a four-year period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75-80% of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20%." - Philip Daileader, medieval historian In the 14th century, a ruthless killer stalked the streets of England, wiping out up to 60% of the terror-stricken nation's inhabitants. This invisible and unforgiving terminator continued to harass the population for hundreds of years, but nothing could compare to the savagery it would unleash 3 centuries later. This conscienceless menace was none other than the notorious bubonic plague, also known as the "Black Death." The High Middle Ages had seen a rise in Western Europe's population in previous centuries, but these gains were almost entirely erased as the plague spread rapidly across all of Europe from 1346-1353. With a medieval understanding of medicine, diagnosis, and illness, nobody understood what caused Black Death or how to truly treat it. As a result, many religious people assumed it was divine retribution, while superstitious and suspicious citizens saw a nefarious human plot involved and persecuted certain minority groups among them. Though it is now widely believed that rats and fleas spread the disease by carrying the bubonic plague westward along well-established trade routes, and there are now vaccines to prevent the spread of the plague, the Black Death gruesomely killed upwards of 100 million people, with helpless chroniclers graphically describing the various stages of the disease. It took Europe decades for its population to bounce back, and similar plagues would affect various parts of the world for the next several centuries, but advances in medical technology have since allowed researchers to read various medieval accounts of the Black Death in order to understand the various strains of the disease. Furthermore, the social upheaval caused by the plague radically changed European societies, and some have noted that by the time the plague had passed, the Late Middle Ages would end with many of today's European nations firmly established. In the mid-17th century, the heart of England fell victim to the mother of all epidemic catastrophes. The city of London was a ghost town, deserted by those who knew better than to hang around in a breeding ground that offered near-certain doom. Those who were confined within the city's borders had to make do with what they had, and the pitifully low morale seemed appropriate; the reek of rot and decomposition pervaded the air day in and day out, while corpses, young and old, riddled with strange swellings and blackened boils, littered the streets. For Londoners, to say it was hell would be an understatement. The Great Plague of London: The History and Legacy of England's Last Major Outbreak of the Bubonic Plague explores the horrific disaster, its origins, the peculiar precautions and curious cures designed to combat the disease, and the sobering legacy it has left behind. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Great Plague of London like never before.

In this intimate history of the extraordinary Great Plague that swept through the British Isles in 1665-66, Evelyn Lord focuses not on London but on the city of Cambridge, where every death was a singular blow which affected the entire community.

Thomson, George.