English Village Sacrificed to Plague (Part 2)

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Episode: English Village Sacrificed to Plague (Part 2)
Release Date: November 24, 2024

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Introduction

In the second installment of their deep dive into the tragic tale of Eyam, Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling continue to unravel the harrowing story of how a small Derbyshire village faced the devastating plague of 1665-1666. Building upon the foundation laid in Part 1, this episode explores the rapid spread of the disease within Eyam, the community's drastic measures to contain it, and the enduring legacy of their actions.

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Recap of Part 1

Anthony and Maddy begin by briefly summarizing the first episode, which set the stage in London where the plague was wreaking havoc by the summer of 1665. They highlight how the disease traveled north to Eyam via a contaminated bundle of cloth, initiating a chain reaction of fatalities within the village.

Notable Quote:

Anthony Delaney [05:07]: "We are back this time for the second part of our plague miniseries...force all living there to make it difficult, even heroic decision."

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The Spread Within Eyam

The episode delves into the initial cases of the plague in Eyam, starting with Alexander Hadfield and his family. Maddy provides a detailed account of how the disease swiftly moved from household to household, devastating the community.

Notable Quote:

Maddy Pelling [10:48]: "Eyam will have lost 25 relatives. It's really, it's hard to imagine. It's really, really hard."

The hosts discuss the social fabric of Eyam, emphasizing how interconnected the villagers were, which contributed to the rapid spread of the plague.

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Community Response: Isolation and Sacrifice

A central focus of the episode is the village's decision to isolate itself to prevent the spread of the plague to neighboring areas. William Mompesson, the village rector, and Thomas Stanley, a Puritan preacher, spearhead this initiative. They propose creating a quarantine boundary marked by large stones, effectively sealing Eyam off from the outside world.

Notable Quote:

Maddy Pelling [15:31]: "They put out these stones in the fields...hoping to sterilize them and prevent the spread of the pestilence."

The discussion highlights the emotional and logistical challenges the villagers faced, including burying their dead amidst overwhelming loss and fear.

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Debate on the Nature of Isolation

Anthony and Maddy engage in a critical debate about whether Eyam's isolation was a consensual, altruistic sacrifice or if it was enforced by external pressures from landowners like the Earl of Devonshire.

Notable Quote:

Anthony Delaney [27:01]: "The Earl of Devonshire... it doesn't feel very 17th century... Something doesn't feel very 17th century about this."

Maddy counters by suggesting that the widely accepted narrative may be romanticized, influenced by later historical periods that sought to elevate Eyam's story as one of pure heroism.

Notable Quote:

Maddy Pelling [20:09]: "The romanticized version... we may not have evidence that they were happy to be put in this situation."

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Historical Authenticity and Myths

The episode scrutinizes the authenticity of the commonly told story, questioning the existence and placement of boundary stones and exploring whether these elements were later additions to enhance the village's historical allure.

Notable Quote:

Anthony Delaney [42:21]: "Do we archaeologically know that those stones were placed there in the 17th century? It doesn't feel right."

Maddy discusses the possibility that some physical markers may have been added during the 18th or 19th centuries to cater to burgeoning historical tourism, thus blurring the lines between fact and folklore.

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Legacy of Eyam

As the episode nears its conclusion, Maddy reflects on the lasting legacy of Eyam. She describes how the village has become a living monument, with plaques marking the homes of those who perished and boundary stones serving as tangible reminders of the past.

Notable Quote:

Maddy Pelling [44:42]: "Eyam is a way of remembering what people lived through during the long centuries of plague pandemics that preceded it."

Anthony and Maddy agree that while Eyam's story is emblematic of broader human struggles against pandemics, it also serves as a cautionary tale about the complexities of community decisions under extreme pressure.

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Conclusion

Anthony and Maddy wrap up the two-part series by acknowledging the depth and ambiguity surrounding Eyam's story. They emphasize the importance of critical examination of historical narratives and encourage listeners to consider the interplay between fact and myth.

Notable Quote:

Anthony Delaney [47:50]: "This has been a real learning episode... thank you to the rest of you for listening to this two-parter on the plague village of Eam."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal offers a compelling blend of historical recounting and analytical debate. By questioning established narratives and exploring multiple perspectives, Anthony and Maddy provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of Eyam's plight during the plague, inviting them to reflect on how history is recorded and remembered.

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Listeners Interested in Learning More: For those intrigued by the story of Eyam, subscribing to History Hit offers access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries and ad-free podcast listening. Visit historyhit.com/subscribe for more information.

Transcript

[Anthony Delaney]

Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to.

[Maddy Pelling]

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[Anthony Delaney]

Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Maddy Pelling]

A mist rolls past the mouth of one of the dark caves of the Peak District, pouring down rugged stony slopes towards the boundary stones of the village of Eym. It passes over fields that are marked by silence, the few solitary figures in them swallowed by its clouds like spectres. The mist swamps up the village street, banking up against the cottages to peer in at the horror. Inside there, people lie dying of plague. We're back in 1665, and it was only one month ago in September, that the first victim, George Vickers, died and was quickly buried. But now the atmosphere in the village of Eyam is tense. A doleful air hangs around the houses where the plague has hold. Neighbours shuffle by, afraid the air is contaminated. Looking out of his own window onto this brooding autumnal scene is William Mompesson, the village priest. He's at his desk and has paused for a moment from updating the parish records with the names and dates of all those who have perished so far. In this month alone, 23 have died. Nearby, the cemetery bulges with hastily dug and hastily covered graves. Remember this name Mompesson, for it will be him who helps persuade the village to make the sacrifice. They will become famous for, for now, all stand on the threshold of death. Welcome to After Dark. Welcome to the second part of our story of the plague village of Eym.

[Anthony Delaney]

Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddy Pelling]

I'm Maddie and I, as you can probably hear, am still dying of the plague.

[Anthony Delaney]

I think it's so fitting for these episodes, but we are back this time for the second part of our plague miniseries, Last Episode. We began at the heart of the capital city in London, where by the end of the summer in 1665, people were already fleeing for their lives in the wake of a terrible, highly contagious disease. And we detailed that in episode one. So if you haven't heard episode one, go back and listen to that before we continue with the story here. The death toll was by then horrendous, as you can imagine, and would only continue to. But as you might remember, our story then took us north to the small Derbyshire village of Eyam, now nestled in the Peak District national park, but which, at the time in autumn 1665, would become a hotbed for the plague that travelled from the south on the back of a cart. It would, as we're about to find out, go on to devastate this rural community and force all living there to make it difficult, even heroic decision. So, Maddy, we've talked a little bit about there in that recap, what exactly we were talking about in episode one, but just give us a very brief recap to get us back up to speed.

[Maddy Pelling]

Sure. So we're in 1665, going into 1666, as you've said, we are in England in the second half of the 17th century. And in the decades prior to this, there has been the execution of Charles I, there's been civil war, there has been the restoration of the monarchy with Charles ii and with it an anxiety that God is looking to punish the people of England. People fall on either side of this idea. Some people think that God is punishing the people of England because they executed Charles I, God's appointed monarch on earth. And the other camp think God is punishing them because they've put a monarch back on the throne, having enjoyed years of what some would see as chaos and what others saw as freedom and liberty. So it's a moment of terrible anxiety. And in the midst of all this, plague comes to London. In episode one, we heard from Samuel Pepys diary about the beginning of the plague, how quickly it spread and how quickly the city of London actually emptied out. People fled in the face of this unfolding horror. And it was horror. There were whole houses of plague sufferers blocked up by neighbours to keep them in their homes. Bells were tolling multiple times a day, telling people to bring their dead out into the street for collection and burial. This is a really grim time. And then we get this bundle of cloth covered in fleas, the same fleas that have been spreading the disease in London on the backs of rats, coming up the road from the south into the north of England to the tiny village of Eyam. And at the end of the last episode, we heard about those devastating early deaths in the house of Alexander Hadfield, who was the tailor who'd ordered the cloth from London to his home. And we heard about how his apprentice, George Vicus, died very quickly, within a couple of days of the cloth arriving. And then we have Hadfield's wife, Mary, her two children, Jonathan and Edward. Edward is 4, Jonathan is 12, dying really suddenly, following vicars into the grave with the same symptoms. And Mary and Alexander are the sole survivors in the house. But at that point, and the point where we left the episode off, the plague has begun to jump from home to home. And in this episode, we're going to hear about that spread, the people who were affected, and how that community really came together and dealt with what was happening amidst their lives and the place that they lived.

[Anthony Delaney]

So take us from the Hadfields house, then, where we know the plague has taken root. I don't know this history, as I said in episode one, but I'm imagining by the very Fact that we're concentrating this entire two episodes on one small village, that this isn't the end of the spread. So where does it go to next? Where does the plague rear its head next?

[Maddy Pelling]

So one of the fascinating things about Eam, if you go there today, and I said this in episode one, is that you can go and stand in front of the cottages where a lot of the plague victims lived and died and there are these plaques that tell you who died in what house, the dates that they died, how quickly it spread, and it's a very immersive and strange experience to stand there and it gives you a sense of just how quickly the plague did spread and how close everyone was living in proximity. So here's a rundown of the initial early stages of the spread taking place and expanding out. First of all, we have Peter Hawkesworth. He lives next door to the Hadfields and he dies on 23rd September 1665. Also in his house, we've got Humphrey. Humphrey is Peter's 15 month old son. He will die the following month of the plague. We've also got Humphrey's mother, Peter's wife, Jane. She will go on to be the sole survivor of their family. But, and I think this gives such a sense of connection in the community and how these rural communities knew each other and indeed were related to each other. Jane, by the time the plague is done with, Eam will have lost 25 relatives.

[Anthony Delaney]

Wow.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, it's really, it's hard to imagine. It's really, really hard. That is your community, your support system, your workforce, your economy, and that's just one person and her relatives. Next, after Peter Hawkesworth, though, and before Humphrey, his 15 month old, dies the next month, we've got Thomas Thorpe. Thomas lives in Rose Cottage, which is just nearby, and he dies on the 26th of September. So we've got the 23rd, Peter's dying, Peter Hawkesworth. On the 26th, we've got Thomas Thorpe. You can see how rapidly this is happening. This is wiping out not just infants and small children, but the breadwinners of the family, the men who are labourers in the village who have skills, who are protecting and supporting their family units. This is absolutely devastating. Next, on 30 September, Thomas Thorpe's daughter Mary follows him to the grave. And then the plague crosses the road and the people in those houses start to get sick and the people behind them start to get sick and it starts to branch out on a really unmanageable scale. And by the time that winter comes in 1665, the cold weather does, it seems, slow down the spread of this. Huge numbers of people have already died. But by Christmas time, there is a sense that this is slowing down. And the village starts to breathe a sigh of relief. You know, they've been through this terrible thing begun in the early autumn that's haunted this period up until Christmas, and the cold weather seems to have put a halt to it. But when the spring breaks and the weather starts to heat up again, the plague comes back renewed, and it is now even worse than ever. And it's at this moment that William Mopperson, who we've heard at the beginning was the village rector, he teams up with another man, a puritan preacher called Thomas Stanley, living in the village. And together they come up with what I think is a very interesting decision or a proposition at least, to put to the people of the village. And I think it's something that, you know, we talked in our last episode about COVID and our collective and individual experiences of the lockdowns, and I think it's something that we can all relate to on a certain level.

[Unknown]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Maddy Pelling]

Prescription only Safety info found at Freestyle Libre US the boundaries of the quarantine circle were about half a mile the village, and they were marked by large stones. There, people from neighbouring villages would leave food and supplies, which the villagers of Eyam paid for by leaving coins in running water or pools of vinegar carved into the rocks, hoping to sterilize them and prevent the spread of the pestilence. By now, conditions inside the invisible prison Eam had made for itself were grim. The graveyard was full and villagers were left to bury their own dead as best they could. Mrs. Hancock, for example, buried her husband and six children by herself, heaving their bodies out and into shallow graves. Yet if stone marked the outlines of this prison of despair, it also symbolized the strength of the inmates in the face of death. On Sundays, those who could would traipse out across the fields to a place called Cucklit Delf, a natural amphitheatre carved in a limestone cliff here in the open air, where families could keep their distance from each other. The rector, William Mopperson, would climb up to a hole in the rock and preach. We know from his letters that by now Mopeson felt sadness and death everywhere, and believed that he himself was a dead man. His young wife, Catherine, died of plague in August after spending months tending to the sick. As he looked out at the faces gathered round him in his craggy pulpit, he knew they were all spinning in a whirlpool of destruction. Yet he and they had the stony strength to persevere, and his voice boomed out, commending his congregation, his comrades on standing firm in the midst of this terror.

[Anthony Delaney]

So here we are. This is why those remarkable details that you have just described, this is why we're concentrating on this particular village and why we're spreading this topic over two episodes, because up until now we've been talking about, you know, plague in London. We've been talking about rats, we're talking about fleas. We've talked about even, you know, those details about cloth spreading the disease. These are things that are very familiar and that it's. It's not necessarily new information. This is what I don't know about. This is what I hadn't heard of, not coming from England. We don't learn about this in primary school, obviously enough, but it is remarkable. And it's two things at once. It's haunting and it is quite stoic as well, isn't it, where you're describing this congregation coming together, but not quite coming together in this naturally occurring amphitheater. And they're preaching about staying the course, but at the same time there's these rocks walling them in and keeping them away from other nearby villages and towns. It is something I've never encountered before. I'm sure there's probably similar histories, but not. Not ones that I'm very familiar with. So this image, and this is why I can see a history like this might endure, but this image that it conjures up is very. It's very dramatic, actually, and it's very. It lends itself to imagination and to visualization and to. Then, I suppose, given our own experiences in relatively recent times, again, not to draw too many close par, because things are very different. But we have an insight into how that isolation might feel to a certain extent because of our own experiences. But, Maddie, tell us how this cordoning off happens. You spoke there about people coming from maybe higher up in that particular village coming in to say, right, this is something that we might need to do. And there's talk of religion and there's talk of puritan ministers. Give us. Give us a sense of how this together in the end.

[Maddy Pelling]

Well, I think we have two versions of this story. We've got the romantic version and we have the historic reality, which is very difficult for us to access.

[Anthony Delaney]

I thought this was coming up. You know, I nearly said it in what I was saying there. It's very easy to ascribe heroism to this, and at the same time, there's something underneath it that's making me uncomfortable. So. And I don't know. I don't know what's coming, but it's interesting to hear you say those two things.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. And I don't necessarily think we're going to get to the bottom of it, and I don't necessarily think we can say there was anything sinister or unheroic about this, but I think we need to look more closely at it. The romanticized version, and this is, you know, the villagers, incredibly brave, incredibly selfless, come up with this system of isolation and they put out these stones, these massive great boulders in the peat district. You know, it's a very rocky place, there's no shortage of rocks, and they put them out in the fields in this rough circle at an equal distance from the centre of the village all the way around to mark this boundary that they've all agreed on. Supposedly it's the rector, William Mopperson, and this puritan preacher, Thomas Stanley, who come up with the idea. They put it to the people of the village and everyone says, yes, that's a fantastic idea. We don't want to give anyone else the plague, we're all going to stay. It'll be terrible for us. But at least this isn't going to spread out to the neighboring villages, to the neighbouring towns, to the cities in the north. This is the version that I grew up with, I'm pretty sure, at school, that we did in primary school a school play about Eam, which, on reflection, slightly odd topic for primary school children to enact.

[Anthony Delaney]

We did one about Babushka. So I'm not going to judge your play about Eam.

[Maddy Pelling]

It not explains love. But, yeah, this is this version. And the other. The other thing about this story that I distinctly remember from the various school trips that I went on to this village as a child was there was a story always told by tour guides. It was probably told in the local museum when I was little. That's certainly my memory was that there was a romance, an actual romance to this, and the details are hazy in my mind and I've not been able to find it. I've really searched for it because I wanted to write. As soon as we said we were doing this episode, I was like, yes, I know the story I want to tell. Could I find any evidence of it? No, I couldn't. The story is that there was either a young woman in the village in love with a young man in another village, or maybe it was the other way around. And it's the young man in Eam and it's the young girl outside and they agree to meet at the border stones. And it's all very tragic, and they don't touch each other and they just look at each other across the stone and he brings her food and all of that. And then one day she never returns and she's died and he's so heartbroken. So whilst, of course, the reality Is everyone in that village would probably know, be related, to be friends with, be in love with someone from another village nearby. I couldn't find any evidence of that particular story. So that the romantic version that we have, that they all take it upon themselves, they do this heroic thing, and they therefore save the people of Derbyshire in the north of England.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm gonna say it wasn't that black and white.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay. It's potentially not that black and white. You are correct. Now, the thing that we need to think about here is that plague affects everybody, no matter how wealthy you are, no matter how poor you are. And, sure, you could say in London, for example, the King is able to escape to Oxford because he's the king, the wealthier people gather up their possessions and they can afford to leave the city. So there are. There is some disparity in terms of how people experience the plague, but the biological fact is anyone can catch it and it can kill anyone. And with that, we see a breakdown in social structure. The fact that it can affect rich and poor, servant and master, the parish priest and the most naughty sinner in the community, makes everything else a little bit meaningless. And it breaks down established world order. And you've got to remember we are in 1665, 1666. This is an era absolutely shaped by the chaos that's come before it in the preceding decades. It's been shaped by civil war. It's been shaped by groups during that period, like the Levellers, starting, essentially cults or communities in different places trying to take over country houses to set up ideal new societies that are based on equality. We've got discussion of the equality of women in this period. The Civil War brought an absolute reversal of hierarchy and order. And then they all had to put it back together again with the new monarch, Charles ii. And so there's great unrest and anxiety in people's minds and in this small village. Of course, the danger is the plague will spread and that it will bring that same kind of chaos back to society. And what we find is that several rich landowners, including the Earl of Devonshire, who I believe would have been at that period, connected with Chatsworth. Of course, Chatsworth House would not have looked as it does now. That's a later iteration. But I think I'm right in saying that the Earl of Devonshire would have been based at nearby Chatsworth. Now, do they agree to help the village on the request of William Mopperson, or do they suggest this in the first place? They suggest if you isolate yourselves and therefore save the rest of Us, we will provide you with all the supplies that you need. Now, EAM is a village of labourers. It's a village of people who know hard work, who live these very physical lives, who are out in the fields tending animals, tending some crops. I don't know how successful crop growing is up on these rocky parts of Derbyshire, but certainly today it's full of sheep. So these are people who live and work outside predominantly. And if you're poorly and you can't do that work, you have no hope, whether you are dying of plague or whether you're a survivor of it, and you're just having to tend to the sick in your community and your family. And my question is the offer made by these landowners and the villages around, whether that really was a generous offer or whether there's a level of enforcement here that we simply don't have the archival evidence for. Did the people of Eyam accept this offer or were they forced into isolation? What do you think?

[Anthony Delaney]

You need to. Look, I think or we need to factor in the idea and the history of compliance and our own, of course, experiences of compliance in the face of COVID 19 informs some of that. It's very difficult for me. And look, we would be wrong to think that the 17th century was a more compliant place than the 21st century is. I think that would be very naive of us. Particularly, as you've been describing throughout both of these episodes, we've been talking about what essentially amounts to a revolution in thinking, at the very least, where a republic can be instated violently and then overturned less violently. And these are not people who just go along with things. These are people who are thinking, who are investigating, who are asking questions, and they are acting on some of those thoughts that they have. So it strikes me that compliance is not something that could be possibly be guaranteed just voluntarily in this situation. And when people become desperate, compliance becomes less and less likely. And it strikes me that these people would have become very, very desperate. Now, you factor in that thing of, you know, there's this story element, let's say, of. Because there's already disparity there, right? One is going, oh, and the nearby villages and towns came and left food outside, and then there was offerings of coins that were put in water and. And I was thinking to myself, wow, that's interesting, unlikely, but obviously this is what's drawing the history. But then you talk about the Earl of Devonshire. It strikes me that he would probably not very much care about the people of Eyam to a certain extent. I mean, he might Care to not allow the plague to spread? Fair enough. Something doesn't feel very 17th century about this. Where you go, okay, now you guys go and isolate yourselves. We'll bring everything to your door. You don't even need to worry about us. That's. That doesn't feel very 17th century, so. And I know I can be very kind of skeptical and crabby at times about some of these things, but you do shock me.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah. I. It doesn't feel right. Does it feel like historically my instincts are going, that doesn't feel right. That doesn't feel right? I don't know. What do you think?

[Maddy Pelling]

I think We've inherited this 18th and 19th century version. You know, the Victorians and the Georgians were obsessed with this history. And we'll talk a little bit in a minute about what appealed to those groups of people in those time periods about this story, because it served different purposes. But I think this idea of this village cooperating and happily consenting to being managed by the people around them, as you say, the 17th century is characterized by the little people stepping up and saying, hold on a second, what's going on here? And pushing back to a certain extent. That's a massive simplification, of course, but I don't think we can necessarily assume that these people were happy to be put in this situation and to be isolated. And as you say, Anthony, people become desperate in the face of a disease that is seemingly invisible, and you want to get as far away from as possible in the face of horrific scenes of death and massive loss, in the face of the disappearance and quietening of the workforce and therefore a lack of supplies and food and everything that comes with that, you know, the total collapse of that village economy. In the face of that, people are going to become desperate and they're going to start to ask questions and try and push the boundaries. Literally, in this case, it seems to me that. That. And from, you know, what we saw of people's response to the lockdown in Covid, we know that people don't willingly accept that often, and that there is pushback and it is controversial, and that people don't want to be told what to do, even if it's for some sort of greater good, especially if you're the person being put in harm's way for the greater good. And I think, for my money, there was a level of control. You know, the Earl of Devonshire and the other landowners nearby, of course they don't want the plague to spread, not because they are benevolent overlords who care about the little people in the village, but because those little people go out into the fields, they tend the sheep, they sell the fleeces at market and they pay their tax to the landowner. They pay what's due. And that whole economy that these landowners are on the top of relies on the little people being well and doing what they're supposed to do in life. And I think they couldn't possibly risk that. And their own positions and their own health and safety as well. You know, they also don't want to catch plague. They are not immune to it. For my money. I think it could have been that Eames started that way. Maybe the idea was floated that everyone needs to stay in their own homes or in the village to try to stem the spread. I'm not saying that's impossible. Did they stick to that collectively and happily into the summer of 1666, when the plague is at its absolute height? I doubt it.

[Unknown]

Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from history hit twice a week, leading experts and academics delve into our distant past and discover secrets thought lost to the sands of time. Join me Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans. And visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the ancients from history hit.

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Anthony Delaney]

So in the secondary sources, is there any inclination that that comes up in research or has this been so mythologized that it's difficult to get to that?

[Maddy Pelling]

I think the established story is simply that they isolated and we're fine with that.

[Anthony Delaney]

I don't buy it.

[Maddy Pelling]

I don't buy it. The interesting debate that has taken place in recent years is whether or not this quarantine worked rather than whether it was consensual. Or not.

[Anthony Delaney]

And that's actually going to tell us something about the consent of it as well, the cooperation level in it. So did it work? I don't know. I mean, surely there would still have been plague.

[Maddy Pelling]

There was to plague, and it can be argued both ways and has been. So on the one hand, there's a suggestion that actually because the village isolated, they lived more intensely in each other's pockets. They had no time to escape, they were packed in with all this death and disease. So actually it spread more easily and more people died amongst them, amongst them, amongst that community. Don't forget, families were instructed towards the end of the time that the plague was inie, to bury their own dead. So, you know, usually people from the church would come and help you to bury your dead and that would be a service that was offered the gravediggers in the graveyard. But by the end, that's not happening and whoever is left in each family is having to go and dig those graves themselves, often digging their own grave at the same time, of course. So you've got a lot more sort of contact with death and disease than maybe would otherwise have happened if they had escaped two neighbouring villages. On the other hand, of course, it is successfully restricted to Eyam, it doesn't spread. And that is remarkable, actually, that there's this intense pocket of it and then nothing. The exact number of people who died in Eyam is really hard to pinpoint, though. So we're talking here, of course, about the period from 65 into 66. They put the number somewhere between 250 and 300 people. Remember in the last episode we talked about how the number of people in the village may have been anywhere from 350 to 700 people. And it's very difficult to pinpoint that because the records just don't really exist anymore. So, I mean, even if it is, if we take the village as being full of 700 people, the highest figure that we've got, 300 of them being dead. That's remarkable and horrifying. In London, just as a comparison, it's thought that 100,000 Londoners died of plague. But again, that comes with a caveat, because the records used for that are parish records or bills of mortality that didn't record the deaths of Jews or Quakers or any other religious dissenter. So of course the number must be much higher. That's simply the number of Christians who died. So the other thing I think that's so remarkable about EAM compared to London is because of the high mortality percentage, because so Much of the population died. The face of it completely changed. Whole families disappeared. Families who had been in that village, I mean, realistically for centuries in that rural place and how, I mean, there are no records really that you would be able to use to do this, but it would be so fascinating to look at the psychological and emotional effect of that. If only we could go back and speak to those villagers who survived and to ask them what it felt to live through that, but also what the aftermath was like, what rebuilding Eam looked like after that much devastation. It's absolutely fascinating and completely, really unfathomable. The other thing to say. So we talked about Alexander Hadfield in episode one, the tailor who originally orders the cloth from London. And we know obviously George Vicars, his assistant, dies. He's the first person in Eam to die. Hadfield does die of plague, but he dies on 3 August 1666, almost a year after Vicars does. So how must he have felt? Presumably he worked out, I guess, that it was the cloth that did it. Just looking at the spread of the disease, how it begins in his household, it begins with George Vickers, who opens the cloth. They must have known or heard at some point during their own trauma and ordeal that the plague was rife in London as well. That news must have reached Eames because the villagers around it knew that it needed to be isolated because they didn't want to end up in the same way as London. So how did it feel for Hadfield, possibly knowing that that cloth, those fleas on the cloth, had brought the plague to his village? It's again hard to fathom one question that I have.

[Anthony Delaney]

Eyam is the only village in England and I say England specifically because this plague didn't reach Scotland, which might say something about this kind of cordoning off up in the north of England. But. Well, I guess it's just the. I was just, I was going to say, why has Eym captured the imagination so much? And it's because of this idea of self isolation or community forcing isolation on themselves. But because, you know, there are privy council acts that are being passed at this time to say you can't trade with different countries that have the plague. So England was one of them, I think. I think the other one was the Netherlands. Initially at least, there was no stopping of trade between other villages and other towns. So like the plague spread elsewhere as well. So if it, if it is the case that Eames was self isolating by choice, surely you would imagine that you'd see that pattern spread in other Places around England, too. And you don't. Right.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's a really interesting question and I don't know the answer to it. I would love to hear if there are other villages that isolated in this way. I think the fact that Eam gets picked up, this story gets picked up, as we said in the 18th and 19th centuries, means that it survives. And it's become this almost mythological example set on a pedestal. It's this unique case, or so it's given to us as being. The plague in general is really romanticized in the centuries afterwards. You get it in Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, which is published in 1722. You get it in William Harrison Ainsworth's Old St. Paul's novel, which comes out in 1847. And if anyone hasn't read any William Harrison Ainsworth, I'd really recommend She's a Liar.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's Maddie that's just. Don't trust her on these things. It's really boring.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's really boring. Oh, my God. He's one of my favorite. He's a sort of late Georgian, early Victorian historical fiction writer, and he writes novels about all kinds of amazing figures in the past. I love him. I love him so much. You're wrong, Anthony. Anyway, we'll continue this debate because I will fight you on this. Okay, so we've established Ainsworth is fantastic. Good going forward. But, you know, the idea of the plague, and of Eam in particular, is really taken up in popular culture. And that's the version that we've got today, I think. I mean, I really think that we should go. One of the things that you can still do there today is, as I said, walk between the cottages and see these plaques of the people who died. And that in and of itself is a really interesting performance of suffering and horror. Right. It's a. You know, it's a living village. People still live there. You can walk around as a tourist and you have to sidestep the actual residents taking their shopping into their house and, you know, their dog in their garden. It's all very mundane and normal, but there's a sign saying, seven people died horribly in this cottage next to that bucolic scene. So that's an interesting way that we live with history. Anyway, but one thing that you can do, and I think this is fascinating, is that you can walk the circumference of the village and there are still what look like boundary stones, and some of them still have the scooped out hollows where vinegar was put for the coins. So there is evidence, there is physical archaeological evidence of this moment in history, this moment in the village's story, and evidence of that isolation, whatever the truth behind it was.

[Anthony Delaney]

You know what I'm going to say though, right?

[Maddy Pelling]

Go on.

[Anthony Delaney]

Do we archaeologically know that those stones were placed there in the 17th century? She literally just. You won't be able to see this, but I'm looking at Maddie. She literally just tilted her head at me as if to go, stop asking questions. Just close out the episode. Get a dot.

[Maddy Pelling]

Don't ask me that. Well, I mean, you know, that is a very interesting question because it seems.

[Anthony Delaney]

To me like that's such a 19th century thing as. Well, this is way later, but it's almost cottingly fairies type world that I'm entering into there.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. And you know, that as well raises the question of historic tourism. When did this tourism to Eam begin? If it was the 19th century, what's to stop people placing large stones in fields? The other thing to say, of course, is that if you're a farmer, particularly if you're growing crops, and again, the defense of that is, I think it's mostly sheep farming in this area, but you don't want giant big stones in your fields. It's an inconvenience. You move them. And so if they are still there, are they left as a respectful piece of evidence, a memorial to that time? Or have they been placed there as part of a sort of tourism trap in the 19th century, for example, or the end of the 18th century? It's really hard to know. And if there are any archaeologists out there who have done a survey of the boundary stones, Eam, I do want to hear from you so that I don't have to shrug. Anthony. And I do know the answer to that because it is fascinating, you know, and it's. It's those layers of history telling as well.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's.

[Maddy Pelling]

But the whole thing about Eam is that it's all about appearance and storytelling. How this story is presented in the moment when it's happening, when the plague is there in 1665 and 16, but also in the centuries since. And it's shapeshift so much. And I think to get back to that original history and the truth of it, I think even for those people trapped in that village, the truth probably wasn't visible to them. They were probably telling themselves a version of what was happening and telling each other stories in order to survive that.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, after two episodes, I think the only place left to go now is to talk and think about legacy. And just as a way of seeing us out, Maddie, I know you have a little something that gives us a clue to the impact that the plague in Eam had.

[Maddy Pelling]

The last burial of the plague dead in Eyam took place on 1st November 1666. Abraham Morton, a farm worker in his twenties, was laid to rest, the last of an eighteen strong Morton family, all having succumbed to the disease. Later that month, the quarantine was lifted and the survivors of Eam emerged back into the world, blinking as though they had risen from Hel itself. What they went through was passed on from generation to generation until it became lore. It's hard now to get at the truth of what happened at Eam. Each version of the story is a little different. After all, the history of EAM's played league isolation was barely known until the 18th century, when local historians and antiquaries began to write it down. Did they inflate the drama to make their region seem more historically important? Or were they looking for a jingoistic hero in Rector Mompesson? In the 19th century, a time when Derbyshire had become a burning centre for the Industrial Revolution, the village became a symbol of pre industrial simplicity and a better lost world. It was the perfect canvas for ideas of the Gothic and the Victorian fascination with the macabre to play out. We're left with that story today. The village is now a living monument to this one horrifying moment in its history, with information boards outside the cottages of those who died and survived. All the while, though, real people continue to live there, sidestepping tourists as they go about their daily lives. Perhaps the story is enough and it's okay not to know exactly what happened at Eyam, because this much is certain. Plague did come to London and to this village and others like it across England in 1665 and 1666. But this was to be the last great plague in England. No more after this did the Black Death return. Eyam is a way of remembering what people lived through during the long centuries of plague pandemics that preceded it. You can be sure that the sacrifice and the suffering of the people of Eyam was echoed by the courage of people all across Europe in those dark times. So it feels good that Eyam is there, hidden among the hills in the north country, a reminder written across the stony landscape of who we are and who we can be. A human story for us to hold onto and not quite let go of.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, this has been a real learning episode, a couple of episodes for me and thank you to the rest of you for listening to this two parter on the plague village of Eym and a big extra. Thanks of course to our listener Megan for suggesting the topic. We do listen to your suggestions, they are being read so do email them in to After Dark Historyhit.com that's After Dark Historyhit.com and we always talk amongst ourselves and amongst the team about which of your ideas we'll be able to take forward two episodes. If you've enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star review. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, it helps other people to discover us. And until next time, happy listening.

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