← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Austin James
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- [00:27]
Maddie
Safety info found @freestylelibre us. Are you a professional pillow fighter or a 9 to 5 low cost time travel agent? Or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It doesn't matter whatever it is you.
- [00:40]
Matt Lewis
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Maddie
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- [00:58]
Matt Lewis
Go to Monday.com to learn more.
- [01:00]
Maddie
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- [01:35]
Anthony
Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now we're going to start this episode with a message from one of our listeners. Over to you Megan.
- [01:43]
Megan
I recently read about a 17th century village in England that tried to prevent further spread of the plague by self isolating. My question for the After Dark team is how much of this story is myth and how much is based in fact? I can't fathom the challenges they must have faced. Are there other records of communities implementing this type of self sacrifice for the greater good? Given our recent experience with deadly communicable disease, I have an even greater appreciation for those who are willing to weather this type of hardship on their own this many centuries ago. I look forward to learning more.
- [02:27]
Maddie
It's 1665 in London and we're on the cusp of the great plague. That word plague conjures images of pustules on ragged bodies, of faces with the pallor of the grave. It's all a Little bit medieval, but we are now in the 17th century. It's 1665, and we're emerging from the English Civil wars on the cusp of a new world. Somewhere in the city, the polymath Robert Hook is peering through his microscope and seeing for the very first time what he understands to be cells on the streets. London's latest craze, the coffee house, is abuzz with chatter. For now, at least, this is the year that over the water in the Netherlands, Johannes Vermeer paints the girl with a pearl earring. That rare beauty smiling directly at us, so bold, so sure, so alive. But something terrible is on the horizon. Come with me now to stand in the shadows beneath Old St. Paul's Cathedral. The wooden houses in the surrounding streets are packed tightly together, each overhanging the passageways below. From down here, they block out tonight's moonlight. A rat is scurrying down the cobble, skipping over puddles of slop, passing invisibly under doors and through casements to lodge at the back of warm hearths or in the stale blankets of exhausted sleepers. And as it does, a killer goes with it. In the days and weeks ahead, it will pass silent and deadly into the alehouses and the churches, bath and bakehouses of this city. It will mingle with crowds at the markets and among the strong arms of women washing clothes down on the banks of the Thames. By the end of the summer, this harbinger of death will have sent hundreds to meet their maker, silencing the coffee houses, emptying the streets and sending thousands more fleeing to the countryside. But even there, they will not be safe for long. It will follow them out into the fields, catch them on the roadside and in the dales and marshes. Eventually, it will bring all of its darkness and all of its despair to knock down the doors of the quiet Derbyshire village of Ey.
- [05:37]
Anthony
Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.
- [05:40]
Maddie
And I'm Maddie. And I'm dying of plague.
- [05:42]
Anthony
And this is why this is an appropriate episode. This is the first of two episodes that we're doing on EAM, the 17th century plague village in Derbyshire. And some of you might know something of this history. I do not. This is all brand new to me. This is not a history I'm familiar with at all. So I'm learning from Maddie as we go. But if you went to school in England, then maybe this is a history that you're familiar with.
- [06:05]
Maddie
I was, Anthony, one of those children who grew up in England and did learn this at school. I grew up Quite near to where this happened, actually. I grew up in Staffordshire and it happened across the border. Very dodgy. They're strange over there in Derbyshire. I have spent a lot of time in my childhood visiting this village and walking its little streets, looking at the cottages where this history took place. And I'm really, really, really glad that one of our brilliant listeners suggested this, because it's a history that I think I'm so familiar with it. It sat in the back of my mind, and I don't think I'd even added it down to our very long list of After Dark episodes. So I'm so glad that someone has brought this to the forefront of my mind now. The history of Eam is so fascinating because really, it's a history of the horror around the plague, but also of sacrifice in the face of this terrible suffering. And across this episode and a second episode, this is, ladies and gentlemen, a miniseries. We are going to be tracing the plague, first of all, in Europe's busiest cities, including London, all the way to this isolated village in the north of England. We're going to be peering through the keyholes of the families that were affected there. And we're also going to be thinking, and I think this is something prescient to our own moment and very recent living memory. We're going to be thinking about collective decisions to isolate in reaction to contagious disease. So without further ado, let's dive in to this story.
- [07:42]
Anthony
So one of the things you were talking about, Maddie, when you set out the narrative in this episode is not necessarily a timeframe that people would be familiar with in terms of plague, that being the 17th century and the latter half of the 17th century at that. So we're looking at 1665 in particular. I know personally that we're talking about a few years after the restoration of Charles ii, but tell us a little bit more about what's happening in England at this time.
- [08:10]
Maddie
Sure. So, yeah, as you say, I think we kind of associate plague more with the medieval world. We can all picture the Monty Python sketches and that sort of very. So I'm sure any medievalist would say that this is not necessarily historically accurate, but that kind of grimy, dark world of the medieval period. But we are here in the second half of the 17th century. This is a moment when we're emerging from years of civil war and chaos. Charles I has been executed in 1649, and his son, Charles II, is restored, as you said, Anthony, to the throne in 1660. It's a very turbulent time. It's a time when the national character in England is being completely reassessed. This is a nation that has chopped the head off its monarch and rethought itself, been under different rule. It's rethought its hierarchies, its land boundaries, right down to sort of the way that individual parishes operate and who's in charge, who holds power. All of that has changed in the last few decades. So that's kind of the moment that we're at. England is at war with the Dutch as well during this period. So there's a burgeoning need for naval power and a lot of the battles that are being fought with the Dutch taking place at sea. There's a question mark as well over, I suppose, the horrors that are going to come. So we're in 1665. We are on the precipice of a monumental year, 1666. The following year, we're standing firmly in 65 for now. But in 1666 we're going to get the Great Fire of London. We're going to get the plague at its height, at its most virulent. And there are going to be all of these bad omens coming at the start of this year. We also get a warship, obviously, ready to go out and fight the Dutch, called HMS London, that explodes in the Thames Estuary. Its powder magazine accidentally ignites and it kills 300 hundred of its crew. And there's just lots of disastrous events that happen that kind of lead to this big climax. And there's a question mark over all of this and people are getting very nervous. There is this idea that maybe killing Charles I is going to have some repercussions, that God isn't happy with the people of England. And so there's anxiety in the air, there's nervousness, there's debate, there's a real lack of clarity moving forward. It's a hopeful time. It's also a fearful time. The world is changing and into this world comes this tremendous disease that is about to wipe out a huge number of people in the population and bring real horror and suffering to the doorsteps of many ordinary folk.
- [11:09]
Anthony
So the first thing that's occurring to me as I listen to some of these details, is that I need to add EAM as a place I need to go and visit, which I have never been to before, I presume. Maddie, I need to go.
- [11:19]
Maddie
You really do. I mean, it's in the Derbyshire Peak District. Yeah.
- [11:23]
Anthony
I haven't done much. Peak District. Okay.
- [11:25]
Maddie
I mean, it's sort of part of a string of really beautiful villages and they have this lovely sort of golden colored stone. It's all very iconic, it's all very pretty and it's kind of, dare I say it, and I'm sorry to everyone in the north saying this, but it's a little bit Cotswolds esque.
- [11:39]
Anthony
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [11:40]
Maddie
It's very, very beautiful, very rural. I love it. I will say I did accidentally once go on Halloween. Quite by accidentally, I was driving. Accidental Halloween visit. I was just driving with my husband around the peaks and we'd gone to do some walk with dogs and we sort of passed by on the way back and thought, you know what, let's go there. And you know, he's, as I've said before on this podcast, pouring multiple times. He's a long suffering, you know, husband of a historian who likes spooky stuff. So he's no stranger to stopping on a road trip and having to get out and look at something incredibly macabre and miserable for everyone else. And luckily for me, he doesn't enjoy that as well. So we stopped and we walked around and it was the most heavy, oppressive autumnal day and the light was dying. We walked around this village and we're going to talk about this across these two episodes. But the village really wears its history on its sleeve. When you get there, it looks incredibly beautiful, but everywhere there are these plaques outside the cottages associated with the plague that tells you who died and when they died. And it really sort of maps out for you how that disease spread. It's a very interesting place. You would love it.
- [12:49]
Anthony
Oh, yes, please. That sounds incredible. But the other thing that's occurring to me, of course, is that there's no way that this began in Eyam. So can you tell us a little bit about where this is coming from?
- [13:02]
Maddie
Yeah, absolutely. So as you've hit the nail on the head there, really, this story and the plague do not originate in this tiny little village. They are spread from the big city, from London. And to tell us a little bit more about plague in the 17th century and in London in particular, we spoke to, or rather our wonderful producer Freddie, spoke to, the brilliant historian Rebecca Riddiel, author of 1666 Plague, War and Hellfire.
- [13:32]
Megan
What's interesting about 1665 is that there's an extra long gap between the major epidemics. So in 1665 we have a population that may not have experienced plague before. And certainly when we look at the sources from people that were living in and around London, such as Samuel Peets, it was shocking and it was surprising for those who were encountering it. He sees houses being boarded up and it's almost like a novelty to him to see this and to experience this kind of epidemic. In terms of when people started to become fearful, it was gradual. It was actually gradual. As 1665 started, they had no reason to believe the plague would be as huge as it actually was. It started off with a handful of deaths outside the city walls. So in a parish called St. Giles in the Fields. So a few deaths happened there. People were monitoring the bills of mortality. The deaths seemed to spread to different parishes. And then finally they entered into the city of London. I think it's at that point that people really started to fearful because it's within the city now. It seems to be escalating to a point that it's, you know, we can't see an end to this. And it's by June time that we start to see people leaving London, evacuating the city. People with means do this. Tens of thousands. So the population of London is around 500,000, maybe 450,000 at this point was depleted to maybe 300,000. By the time we get to the peak plague, which is in August and September, these plague orders are disseminated. They're hammered to posts around the city. They're given out, people can read them. And these plague orders would essentially stipulate that if you have plague you need to be shut up and the building would be shut up. So all those classic images that we have from films and things like Monty Python and horrible histories, a lot of it actually rings true. It might sound absurd and really quite horrible, but they did have notices. Or the idea was that they would have notices drawn on the front of houses. So Lord have mercy on our souls, they would have that. There are reports of people ringing the bell for bodies to be brought out and put onto carts, saying things like bring out your dead. It's so Monty Python esque, but it was so real for these people as well. I get a real sense of looking at all of this material is that there was a feeling of despair of this is the unknown. We don't really know what's going to happen. There's references in Pepys diary to seeing grass growing again on roads within London. And that was really bizarre for him. He thought that that was a really strange thing. He thought it was really strange that the streets were empty. And he remarked on the novelty of seeing people returning to London and seeing carriages and the gentry returning, which he thought was curious because he's obviously Been so used to things being so desolate. There's also this kind of macabre curiosity. He goes out himself to go and see if he can see bodies. And when he does see bodies in the street, he remarks on it in his diary. And I think it's really hard for us to get our head round, but I do think that's kind of human nature. We're always drawn to the darkness, we're always drawn to the macabre, whether we like it or not, because it gives in some weird way, it validates life. But then we also get a sense of stories and gossip. Like have you heard about that person that escaped from the house in X street? Or did you hear that a number of physicians dissected a plague victim and then they've all died? This was a story in Pepys diary which was probably true actually, which is just so stupid from the doctors to have done it. So there's these stories that are going round as well as we do now. We kind of. We like to hear about things. So we have all of that. A real mixture of emotions. If we look to London, there's a hierarchy of power. So you have the mayor and then you have the aldermen and you have this power that's basically concentrated around the guildhall, which is the case in most cities. And they put together plague orders.
- [17:41]
Maddie
Anthony, we've heard there a little bit about the plague, the way that people started to react to it and deal with it in the city. And to help us with this visualizing of this time period, I have given you an image from a broadsheet, an illustrated broadsheet in London. And interestingly it was created in 1666 towards the end of the plague there. So just talk us through what you're looking because I think it is just the perfect summary. That's the visual disaster language, I suppose.
- [18:13]
Anthony
It's really, really interesting. So it's a panel of nine square, well, rectangles I suppose. So I won't go through all nine of them because we'll be here for 438 hours. But the top left one is interesting because it's interior in a relatively well to do house. There's people sick in beds, there's people sick on the floor. There's a coffin sitting nearby so that it looks like quite a small coffin. So that's, that's there. I'm seeing a lot of Thames transportation, a lot of Thames transportation actually. But then the things that strike me the most is the bottom six images and sometimes it doesn't work for me when historians draw parallels with more contemporary events. But this, to me, I don't know if you remember Mari, but at the very beginning of COVID we were seeing images of mass graves coming from other countries of people who had died from COVID And they were being buried together because they didn't know how this disease was. They didn't have a full grasp on how the disease was spread or how the virus was spread. And what we're seeing here is versions of that now. Some of are in graveyards. But even still, some of these burials that I'm looking at from the 17th century are in graveyards, but it's a very, very busy graveyard. But then in other places, I'm just seeing multiple, multiple, multiple wooden coffins being carried. And it just looks across land and it just feels like burial en masse, even if it's not a mass burial plot. And then in the bottom center, something a little bit more formal, which imagining is alluding to some kind of idea that this plague is encompassing people from all levels of society. So you're getting people who are being buried in more communal graves outside the town is. I'm looking at one of them that it's very clear that these burials are happening outside the town. In fact, some of those bodies are not even in coffins. They're just lying on the ground outside the town. So this really. Yeah, it's quite shocking, right? And it would be anyway. But when you remember those images that we were seeing on the news, it's so bizarre to think that we can't quite relate to this in the same way, but we do have a link to it in our emotional memory. And that's an odd comparison. I just never thought we would be able to draw those comparisons.
- [20:33]
Maddie
It is. It's a. It's a shocking comparison, really. And it's, you know, it brings up experiences and memories. Certainly we lived through that time. And I think it's interesting, actually, the sort of historic parallels with COVID There's been a lot of commentary by historians who've been careful to distinguish between the plagues of the past and Covid itself. But it's interesting. I think in the aftermath of COVID everyone became very interested in the Spanish flu almost 100 years before and that historical moment. And that's the sort of connection that I've held in my head as well. And then preparing for these episodes really made me think about not only the sort of the rapid spread of disease and what it feels like to live in that moment, but Also people's reactions to it and the way that people try and manage that and manage other people during that is really sort of fascinating. And that's really what the story eam and indeed the story of the plague in London is all about. So what we're looking at in these nine panels is essentially the story of the plague coming to London. We've got it, as you say, in this first scene in this bedroom, where people are starting to exhibit these symptoms and die. And then we've got this mass exodus from the city. You've got people getting on barges to get away from the disease. You've got people leaving, and those who are left behind are having to bury the bodies and deal with this crisis as it's unfolding. And then you've got, eventually the disease dying off itself and people returning to the city and returning really changed from the whole experience. And I think it's difficult to fathom the scale of the plague in 1665, the human cost of it, the effect of it psychologically, the effect of it culturally. It first appears in a city in Jew, June 1665. And a lot of the commentary that we have today comes from the diarist Samuel Pepys, who, if you've ever actually sat down and read his diaries, he was a dreadful human being. So I'm not necessarily endorsing him by using his quotes here, but he wrote in June 1665, I hear that plague has come to the city. And that's this sort of famous quote that's always used that, you know, this was the sort of beginnings of it. And there are murmurings of it in the street. And then just a few days later, he writes, this day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors. And lord have mercy upon us written there. And it becomes clear very, very quickly that this disease is spreading through the urban environment. And people start. And I think this is really important, this idea of people's reactions to contagious diseases, that they start to mark the doors of the houses of families affected with this red cross. And sometimes by writing, lord have mercy upon us. And that harks back to this idea we have of maybe that question mark over whether it was right to kill Charles I. If this is some kind of divine retribution. But what's so fascinating is that in the marking of the houses, some people mark their own houses as a way of warning others that they've contracted the disease and they don't want to pass it on. But in some cases, the houses are locked by the neighbours and marked out and people are forced to self isolate. If we're going to use the terminology we're all very familiar with, sort of against their will. And this organization of society and the sacrifices that are asked of some people, that some people step into themselves and others impose on other people. I just find this fascinating and I think I don't want to, you know, make too much of a parallel. I don't think we can understand what it would be like to be in the 17th century in London, but I do think we know something of that experience.
- [24:49]
Matt Lewis
I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast, where every week we'll be delving into the real life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed franchise. Join us as we explore the narrow streets of Medici ruled Florence, cross sand dunes in the shadow of ancient pyramids, climb the rigging of 18th century brigs, sailing across the Caribbean, and come face to face with some of history's most significant individuals. Whether you're a history fan, a gamer, or just someone who loves a good story, Echoes of History is the podcast for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:41]
Unknown
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- [26:41]
Austin James
Hey, it's Austin James. If you're like me, trying to live your best life while living with diabetes, you can relate to worrying if you're doing a good Job managing your diabetes. I use the Freestyle Libre 3 sensor to get real time glucose readings and see the impact of every meal and activity to make better decisions. The Freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor can help me live life with diabetes on my own terms and it gives me more time for the things I love, like being a dad and a musician. Now this is progress. Learn more @freestylelibre us for prescription only.
- [27:07]
Maddie
Safety info found @freestylelibre us.
- [27:20]
Anthony
I have a few questions then, which I think will be just really good to arm ourselves with before we get into any more detail about plagues specifically. So we're going to do it in a kind of a rapid fire way. And Maddie, you can tell me whether I know these facts or whether I think I know these facts. So debunk some of the myths that have grown up around the plague, I guess. So, first of all, we're Talking about the 1665-1666 plague, which I know was the bubonic plague, so we'll start with that. That's fact, right, Maddie? It's bubonic, correct? Yes. Now this I know because it's been all over TikTok for the last six months to a year.
- [27:56]
Maddie
I don't know why.
- [27:58]
Anthony
All his historical information, my PhD is from TikTok. And there's this kind of revisionism about the rats, Maddie. Rats? Spreaders of the plague or not spreaders of the plague.
- [28:10]
Maddie
Okay, so technically it is the fleas on the rats that are spreading the disease. The fleas are biting human beings. The rats are coming into the domestic space or, you know, wherever people are coming into contact with them. The fleas are the ones biting the people and spreading the disease. That said, it's the rats that are transporting the fleas. So it's a sort of chicken and egg situation, I guess.
- [28:34]
Anthony
We can't let the rats off the hook. Come on, like. They are a very vital part of this transmission.
- [28:38]
Maddie
I'm sorry to everyone who knows and loves rats out there, but.
- [28:41]
Anthony
And they are cute.
- [28:42]
Maddie
I think they're quite cute. They don't bother me. I'm not really scared of mice and rats. Spiders, on the other hand. Absolutely. They're guilty of all atrocities the world over. They can all be part of the.
- [28:51]
Anthony
Brain from spreading the plague.
- [28:53]
Maddie
I'm. Yes, fine, I concede.
- [28:57]
Anthony
Right. Symptoms then. Do we have what everybody probably knows about? There are swellings, which we all have heard in our primary school history lessons are buboes. The lymph nodes swell. Armpits, groins, neck. That's where we're Looking for things. You see them on the dummies when you go to any of those museums that are kind of replicating. Are those the symptoms most associated with the bubonic plague?
- [29:19]
Maddie
I'd say those are the most common, yes. But also things like headaches, vomiting and fever, which in the 17th century, I'm guessing could be from a lot of things, including just a hangover. But yes, absolutely. The buboes, these lymphatic areas, swelling and blackening. Absolutely. Horrifyingly, if you had these symptoms, any of these symptoms, according to the National Archives statistics I've drawn this from, you had a 30% chance of dying within 14 days of getting those symptoms.
- [29:54]
Anthony
30% chance of dying within 14 Days. I'm going to take those. I don't want the plague, by the way. Just touch all the wood there. But, like, there are better odds than I thought. I would have thought that if you got the plague, you were dying and that's it. But no, I mean, I wouldn't be.
- [30:08]
Maddie
Thrilled to hear that statistic if I was covered in black swellings.
- [30:12]
Anthony
No, but 70% chance of survival?
- [30:14]
Maddie
Well, I think it's. It's just. No, it's not 70% chance of survival. It's 30% chance that you're going to die within those 14 days very rapidly. You might survive 15 days, possibly make it to 16, probably not going to be great.
- [30:31]
Anthony
Do you know what? One of the things that really, you asked earlier about, like, the imagery that sticks with me about the plague and another one of those things is this bell ringing to mark burials. So, you know, the bell ringing is increasing, increasing, increasing throughout this period of. Because the deaths are increasing, increasing, increasing. So they're marking all these burials. So that's another kind of great imaginative hook for us to delve into when we're imagining this time.
- [30:55]
Maddie
Yeah, absolutely. So the plague becomes worse in the warm seasons, and at the height of summer in 1665, you can hear the bells ringing in London five, possibly six times a day as the dead are being brought out. And the bells, by the way, are to tell people to bring their dead out. It's a signal that this is the time when you can bring the bodies out of the house and dispose of them and put them to rest. There's one myth that we need to bust because I think it's quite pervasive. And so I'm gonna ask you it as a question. Do you think the Great Fire of London, which comes, of course, in 1666, does that end the plague? Does the fiery destruction of a huge swathe of the city, kill off the disease.
- [31:41]
Anthony
I do know the answer. I'm not just cheating because I have got the notes in front of me. I do know that the. The answer to that is no. But I think if you asked most people just on the street what ended the plague in 1666, they would definitely say the Great Fire of London.
- [31:56]
Maddie
Right, Yeah, I think it's one of those ones that's really persisted. What we do know is that actually the fire never reached or at least didn't completely destroy the areas that had been most affected by plague. So areas like, on what was on the outskirts, things like Whitechapel, Clerkenwell and Southwark as well. So it didn't. But I think in the 17th century imagination and today, the Great Fire and the plague are linked in all these interesting ways and become these omens of further bad things to come. And as we've said, that possibly the consequences of all this killing of the monarch and this restructuring of England and indeed the restoration of the monarch, there are people on the other side who claimed that restoring the monarchy was the thing that was bringing these bad things into being. So it's a really dark and complicated time when people are so unsure of what's happening. They don't really know what's causing the plague, they don't really know how it's spreading. They also don't really know how to treat it. So I've got some of the treatments here that people were using at the time to try and either relieve the symptoms they were exhibiting or the people around them were exhibiting, but also to try and prevent catching it in the first place. So people who had the buboes, the headaches, the vomiting, the fever would be bled with leeches, which, you know, we now know it's not great.
- [33:23]
Anthony
Do you know what's mad about the old leeches? How persistent they are in treatment? Like centuries, centuries, centuries. And I mean, leeches are still used in some treatments today, but how concretely, scientifically they were used. We are talking about centuries in the past where they're bleeding people.
- [33:40]
Maddie
I was writing about some leech sellers the other day at the beginning of the 19th century, and I didn't know this until I did this research that actually to catch leeches, because you think of them in the sort of medical jars in a doctor's room or something in the past, but actually to catch them, one would have to expose one's legs, pull up your trousers or your skirt, wade out into a bog and let them attach themselves to You. And then you would pick them off once they'd had their little feed of, you put them in your jars or whatever you brought, and then sell them on to medical establishments. Not a great job.
- [34:18]
Anthony
Have you ever had a leech?
- [34:19]
Maddie
Have I ever had one attached to my body?
- [34:22]
Anthony
Yeah.
- [34:22]
Maddie
Have. No. Have you?
- [34:24]
Anthony
Multiple. Multiple leech eye leeches? Yeah. God, I guess. I don't know. Is it growing up in the country thing? Yeah, no, totally. In rivers and stuff. So you go in like. We used to spend childhoods in rivers and.
- [34:34]
Maddie
You mean like accidentally? I thought you meant as a treatment, as medical.
- [34:39]
Anthony
No, I'm not that much of an 18th century gentleman.
- [34:44]
Maddie
You're so committed to the part. The other thing that people in the 17th century thought was causing the spread of the disease was the air. They thought that the air was impure. If it smelled bad, it must have bad stuff in it. And so people would try and cleanse the air in the streets, the air in their homes, with smoke, with burning, various things. Children were encouraged to smoke pipes to ward off this bad air. I once heard Susanna Lipscomb, on her history hit podcast, Not Just the Tudors, talk about how there was a child at, I'm going to say Harrow, it was either Harrow or eton in the 17th century, who got in trouble at school and was punished, possibly caned or whipped, for not smoking his pipe.
- [35:31]
Anthony
Oh, right. Whatever's cool at the time, guys.
- [35:34]
Maddie
I guess the other thing, and we're going to see this in Eyam as well as in London, was vinegar. Vinegar soaked into cloth for the smell, but also vinegar as a cleaning agent. And I think that's interesting because presumably that has some. You know, we still use vinegar to clean things now, but again, I want to just come back to this idea of stopping the spread and to return to the dreadful Samuel Pepys. He talks so much about the city emptying as people begin to flee out. So the King Charles II flees to Oxford, for example, and people head off into the countryside to try and escape. What's happening? By the middle of the summer in 1665, 700 people are dead, according to Pepys. And this is sort of at the first. The height of the first big wave, I suppose, of this. The streets have emptied of living people. The dead are being brought out and sometimes just abandoned. And people are shutting themselves in their homes, are sometimes doing that, as we've said, because their neighbours have locked them in, but also to try and save their communities. I think that's fascinating. You know, I have a quote here from Samuel Pepys, and he says, I'm out of doors, little to show forsooth my new suit. Why is that his main concern? I mean, we all bought clothes in the lockdown and wanted to show them off and had nowhere to wear them. But, like, honestly. But he says he went to see poor Dr. Burnet's door shut. But he hath, I hear, gained great goodwill among his neighbours, for he discovered it, the plague himself first, and caused himself to be shut up by his own accord, which is very handsome. So, you know, there's this kind of feeling that people, I mean, there's certainly, you know, the state isn't imposing this on people, but in these pockets around London, there's this sense that people are taking responsibility, trying to stem the flow. But of course, as we know, that's not going to be hugely effective in the face of this very contagious disease.
- [37:51]
Matt Lewis
I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast, where every week we'll be delving into the real life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed franchise. Join us as we explore the narrow streets of Medici ruled Florence, cross sand dunes in the shadow of ancient pyramids, climb the rigging of 18th century brig sailing across the Caribbean, and come face to face with with some of history's most significant individuals. Whether you're a history fan, a gamer, or just someone who loves a good story, Echoes of History is the podcast for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by history. Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:43]
Unknown
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- [39:23]
Anthony
So this is all really formative information, but one thing I'm really aware of is this is not London Plague City. This is Eam Plague Village. And I want to get there now and I want to understand how the history of London is going to inform what's happening beyond London and in Eames specifically. So, Maddie, can you take us there and give us a little bit more information about how this history unfolds there?
- [39:49]
Maddie
It's the Late summer, or rather early autumn of 1665, and a cart trundles along a dirt track in The Derbyshire countryside, 150 miles away from the capital. It passes through what we know today as the Peak District, a part of England renowned even back then for its dramatic and beautiful scenery. Indeed, in 1636, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it the English Alps, where plentiful rivers flowed past hills that emulate the sky and giant caves unto the sun unknown yawned terribly like the openings to hell. The cart is piled with packages. Among them is a large box containing a bundle of cloth that began its journey in London and is on its way to the tailor of the village of Eym. Between its folds, fleas writhe and jump, a tiny, deadly warning of what is to come. But we're not there yet. The fateful box bounces along, rocked by the motion of the cart as its driver enjoys the view. In the distance, eam appears a collection of golden stoned cottages, tightly packed along the road and each backed by long fields marked out by their original medieval strips, and concluding at the edge of the rocky wilderness beyond. The cart enters the village, passing by cottage after cottage until eventually it reaches the house of the tailor. The box containing the cloth and its fleas is taken down, carried to the door and handed to its intended owner, one Alexander Hatfield. Hatfield's assistant, George Vickers, is the one who opens it up and, noticing the cloth is damp, takes it out and hangs it in the garden to dry. It flaps there, hopping with fleas in the close autumn air. In the middle of this crowded place, neighbours push past it, children duck under it, animals brush up against it. The pestilential cloth hangs there as villagers chatter and barter in each other's doors, raise their glasses in good cheer in the alehouse, and crowd back into their cottages to sleep. Whole families and some lodgers piled in together. But as they dreamt, none of them heard the approaching footsteps of death.
- [42:40]
Anthony
Come through pestilential cloth. That is the best two words I have ever heard used together in my entire life. Maddie, before we get into talking about Hadfield's house, which we will, and I'm very excited to talk about, just give us a brief overview of what we need to know about Eyam itself at this time.
- [42:58]
Maddie
Okay, so as we've said, Eyam is a village in the Derbyshire Peak District National Park. As it is now, it's somewhere between Buxton and Sheffield, and Eyam itself has a population today of around about a thousand people. So it's a small place. Small, but perfectly Formed and very pretty. There's been a lot of debate by historians around the size of the village and the size of the population there in the 1660s, mainly because it's quite difficult to get the appropriate primary sources that we would need to do this. So early estimates, which are based on actually the writings of a local historian in the 18th century, you know, someone working 100 or so years after the plague hit seam, estimate that the number of villagers was around about 350. And as we're going to find out, if that was true, the mortality rate is put somewhere around 85%. So this is really going to be a devastating event. That said, more recently, parish records and half tax return documents from this period have been published. You can see them online. And a conservative estimate of the population of EAM is now about 700, which would obviously, you know, compared to that 350, it makes the mortality rate percentage lower. Still not great.
- [44:19]
Anthony
Still striking.
- [44:19]
Maddie
Yeah, it's still really striking and certainly a higher mortality rate than London itself, not in terms of the numbers of the dead, but in terms of that percentage of the population that is going to be taken out. So that's what's awaiting this little rural idyl, as that cart carrying the cloth trundles towards it. And when it gets there, it devastates a whole community and a community of real people. So let's meet some of these people. So, as we heard in the narrative there, we've got Alexander Hadfield. And I always feel really sorry for Hadfield because he is the tailor who has ordered this cloth, obviously, to make clothing with all the way from London. And this is happening towards the end of the summer, the beginning of the autumn. The plague is already firing up in London. It's already killed a significant amount of people. And yet we know now that that cloth had the fleas in that brought the disease all the way to Derbyshire. But how was he to know that? And yet that decision, the business that he runs, the choice he makes to purchase that cloth from London and its arrival, all end up having this devastating effect. And I always just feel really sorry for him that he's sort of the cause of it in some unfortunate way. We then have in the same household, Mary, his wife. Mary has been married before. She's on her second husband now with Alexander Hadfield and she has two sons from that previous marriage, Edward and Jonathan, living in the house, and they are early teens, I think. There's also George Vickers, who's Hadfield's assistant, his apprentice, being trained by him, and he's the one who opens the bundle first, comes into contact with the cloth and he hangs it up to dry because it smells damp to him.
- [46:18]
Anthony
One of the things that strikes me about this, and I think it's the kind of history that I really enjoy. Like, often we think about and we talk about these big events that are changing the world or changing a locality or changing a country, whatever it might be. And it's often a battle, it's often a, you know, someone usurping a crown. It's often the beheading of a monarch. But here and in so many other tantalizing parts of the past we have the unpackaging of some cloth is going to change this entire village's history. And at that particular moment in time, how lives will be lost. And it's in those small everyday actions that that to me is the kind of history that I really respond to. So that image that you were painting in that narrative was just so clear of unfolding this damp piece of cloth. And then it's going to be hu. Out on the line. And little does that person know George Vickers, little does he know what's about to unfold and it's about to change everything. It's kind of sliding doors history, right?
- [47:25]
Maddie
Yeah, it's so every day and it's so, therefore, so insidious that nobody realizes, you know, this isn't anything out of the ordinary that's happening up to this point. Nobody realizes the horror they've let into their home by accident. And, you know, it's the same in London. When you think about all the rats, though, just moving around. Sure, people probably weren't thrilled to find them in their home, but they were a common, an everyday part of normal life. You know, you'd find them in your bed, you'd find them in your rafters, under your floorboards, behind your fireplaces, hiding in the ash to keep warm, you know, all of those things in the street, in the privy, everywhere. And it's these everyday things that then conspire to create and spread this terrible disease. So inevitably, we know what's going to happen next. And it's George Vickers who first becomes ill just two days after the parcels arrived. He starts, starts to develop a fever. And then when he takes off his clothes, because he's so warm, he realizes he's covered in a red rash and there are swellings starting in his groin, in his armpits and around his neck. And less than a week later, on the 7th of September, he is dead. But of course we know how Contagious. This is. This is not going to stay with Vicars and go to the grave with him on the 22nd of September. So just a few days later, little Edward, who is Mary's son from her first marriage, one of the two sons, he's only four, he dies. Then on 2 October, Mary's other son Jonathan, who is 12, follows his little brother to the grave. So Mary has lost the apprentice living in her house, George. She's lost her two sons, Edward and Jonathan and Mary and Alexander are all that's left. And they're in this house. Not a huge house, it's just a cottage, but a house that's been so full of life and close bodies pressed together and working alongside each other and now it's empty and it's quiet. But of course the plague isn't going to stop there and it's not going to be confined to their house for long. A few days before the fatal box of cloth arrived in Eyam, the village was in the midst of its annual wakes celebration. This was a day for coming together to, among other things, mark the harvest. There would have been dances and drinking glasses raised in the air as they wished each other well. Then the pestilence began to spread. A week after the wakes, George Vicars died in agony with plague spots on his chest. By the end of the month six people had perished. And by now the villagers knew the fatal disease was plagued. Their hearts must have filled with dread knowing the old enemy was back. It jumped from house to house, family to family. The Siddles and Torres family, the Banes and Coopers and Thorpes, all decimated. The disease was in some measure checked over the harsh winter of 65 into 66. But in the following year it would spread rapidly, leaving the village nearly desolate. What a difference a year can make. By the time the day that ought to have been the wake's celebration came around again in 1666 the disease had reached the height of its destruction and malignancy. No one thought of dancing. All now expected death and had no hope of escape. Because by then the villagers of Eyam had taken a decision, a heroic decision really, to cut themselves off from the world in a bid to save their neighbours. The story of that self sacrifice is where we're headed next.
- [51:55]
Anthony
Well, there ends the first of two episodes on Eam plague village. As the plague spreads from 1665 into 1666, the inhabitants of this village are about to take a drastic but as Maddie mentioned there heroic step in an attempt to curb the spread of the plague. Join us again next time on After Dark when we continue this dark history of Eam Plague Village.
- [52:27]
Unknown
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Anthony
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