The Children's Book of London

by G. E. Mitton

There is a story of a man who had a good deal of money, and he shut himself and his household up in his house, and allowed no member of his family to go out. The doors and windows were closed, so that it was all dark, and food was only got by tying a basket to a string and letting it down at a certain time each day, when a person who had been paid to do so filled it with food. In the morning the whole family had breakfast together in a lower room, and afterwards the children were sent up to play in the garret. In this way the greatest danger of infection was escaped.

Of course, so soon as foreign nations heard of the plague they sent no more ships to England, and instead of being covered with vessels from all lands, the Thames was deserted and silent. Worse than that, numbers of people threw the dead bodies of their friends who had died into the water, and these floated down with the tide, or, catching in some pier or beside some boat, hung there until the air was filled with the dreadful smell of the rotting bodies. Cats and dogs were drowned, too, for fear that they should carry the infection, and their dead bodies made the river loathsome. Everywhere there were awful sights and sounds and smells; not even by the water could anyone escape. When the hot weather came in summer the plague grew worse; in one week four thousand persons died of it. Four thousand! It is difficult to imagine. But this was not the worst: the deaths went on until London was a city of the dead, and the living were very few. Fathers had lost children, husbands wives, children parents; there was no household that had not suffered from the plague. A preacher who used to go about the streets dressed only in a rough garment of fur like John the Baptist had prophesied that the grass should grow in the streets, and that the living should not be able to bury the dead. It was long since the first part of this had been true, and now the second became true, too. The people who were left were not enough to bury those who died, and even in the streets the bodies lay unburied. St. Paul's itself was used as a pest-house—that is to say, as a hospital for the plague-stricken. We can imagine that the people who were left alive felt as if they were living in some nightmare dream from which they could not awake. They must have lost all hope of ever seeing London restored to itself, and the streets clean and bright once more. It was not until the summer was past and the cold weather began that the deaths were fewer, and when the number was only one thousand a week everyone began to get hopeful again. People who had fled into the country began to come back, a few shopkeepers opened their shops, the country people came timidly to bring vegetables for sale, and so gradually things got a little better.

The houses were cleaned and whitewashed, the streets were cleansed, and large fires were lit to burn up any rubbish that might still hold infection. St. Paul's Cathedral was cleaned out, and the beds that the patients had used were burned, and all seemed better.

Then happened another terrifying thing, even more alarming than the plague to the unfortunate people who lived in London at that time. One night, when everyone had gone to bed, the church bells in the city began tolling, and soon feet were heard hurrying on the streets; cries of alarm woke even the laziest, and everyone hurried out to see what was the matter. Against the darkened evening sky they saw a lurid colour like a crimson flag, and this changed and waved as columns of smoke passed in front of it; there was no doubt that a big fire had been lighted somewhere.

At first some may have thought this was only one of the bonfires that the police had lighted to burn up the rubbish, but they soon found it was much worse than that. Whole streets were on fire and burning, and, worse than all, a strong wind was blowing the flames right over London.

The houses then were nearly all of wood, and, being old, were very dry. They burned splendidly; no man could have made a better bonfire. The flames seemed alive; they leaped from one to the other, they licked up the woodwork on the gable fronts, they danced into the windows and in at the doors—no one could stop them or save the houses once they had been touched. The great red demon Fire licked up house after house as if he swallowed them with his great red mouth, and the more he ate the more he wanted; his appetite grew larger instead of less. There were only old fire-engines, not like those we have to-day, and water was very scarce, and at first the people stood terrified, staring stupidly, and then began to run away. It was not for some time that the authorities thought of pulling down some houses so as to make a gap over which the great red flames could not leap. But it is not easy work to pull down houses, and before it could be done the flames leaped on again and again and drove them back. At first the poor people whose houses had caught fire threw their furniture and goods into the streets to save them. But they very soon saw this was no use; the flames got them just the same, for there was no time to carry the goods away, and what the flames did not get thieves in the crowd seized and ran away with.

Now the wind seemed fairly to get hold of the fire, and drove it on with a roar like a steam-engine; the shrieks of people in the streets were drowned by the crash of the burning timbers as the roofs fell in. The heat was so great that some persons, pressed too near to the fire by the crowd, covered their scorched faces with their hands and screamed aloud. Everywhere was confusion and running to and fro, and yet no one could do anything to stop those terrible flames. When a big brewery was attacked by the fire, men rushed in and pulled out the casks into the street, and then, forgetting the perils of the plague and of the fire, drank until they reeled about the streets, and some even fell into the flames and were burnt.

The place where the fire began was not far from London Bridge, and the red light reflected in the water lit the city up with an awful glare. Some of the people in the houses which were then standing on the bridge got into boats, and, without heeding the awful heat and the showers of smuts, rowed away up the river to a safer place.

The churches began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the flames roared on, and devoured everything in their course. Even those whose houses were at the west end began to tremble. King Charles II. himself had now come back to London, and when he was told of the great danger that threatened his city, he was the first to go to help and to suggest that houses must be pulled down to stop the flames. This was very difficult, because the houses to be pulled down had to be a long way in front of the fire, or there would not have been time to get them down before the fire reached them. And when the people to whom they belonged were told that they must come out because their houses were to be destroyed, they very naturally objected, and said they were quite sure the fire would never get so far as that; and, anyway, why should their houses be pulled down and not others?

The fire had begun first in a poor quarter, but it soon came on to the houses of wealthy merchants, and then a strange sight was seen: these men, hastily gathering up their gold and silver, their rich bales of stuff and merchandise, hurried westward, and the streets were filled with carts and men laden with goods jostling, pushing, and hurrying in both directions. At the end of that day the fire still burned as if it would never stop; surely never before had there been such a bonfire. Not a single person in London could go to bed. How did he know that he might not be awakened by the flames leaping in at his windows? No, everyone was in the streets, either watching or talking or shouting, and very few did any good or knew what to do; they mostly got in the way of others who were trying to stop the flames.