Great Fire of London: Mobs, Firestorms, and Revenge

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Episode Summary: "Great Fire of London: Mobs, Firestorms, and Revenge" Release Date: January 13, 2025

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Introduction and Overview

In the second and final installment of the mini-series on the Great Fire of London, hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve deeper into one of history's most devastating urban disasters. Building upon the foundations laid in the previous episode, this segment explores the chaos, human behavior, and the aftermath of the fire that reshaped London in 1666.

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The Great Fire of London: Onset and Spread

The episode opens with a vivid description of London on the night of September 2, 1666. Samuel Pepys, an eyewitness and key diarist, navigates the city engulfed in flames. Maddie sets the scene:

“The sky has glowed red all night. Despite the early hour, the narrow streets of London are crowded with people running, riding heaving carts, shouting instructions...” ([00:00])

The fire ignited in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane and rapidly dispersed due to dry, windy conditions, exacerbating an already tense environment marked by the aftermath of the plague and political instability following the Restoration of Charles II.

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Primary Accounts and Historical Records

The hosts emphasize the significance of firsthand accounts in understanding the fire's impact. Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn emerge as pivotal figures whose diaries provide invaluable insights.

Maddy highlights:

“...so limited is the perspective because we cannot hear from people outside of this specific network. We have Pepys, we have Evelyn, we have these wealthy men...” ([07:55])

Anthony and Maddie discuss the limitations of these sources, noting that the voices of ordinary Londoners, especially women and the lower classes, remain unheard.

Furthermore, archaeological findings, such as melted iron hooks and glass from destroyed windows, corroborate the intense heat and widespread destruction documented in the diaries.

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Human Behavior Amidst Chaos

As the fire raged, societal norms disintegrated, revealing the darker aspects of human nature. The episode explores how the disaster unraveled the rigid hierarchies of 17th-century London, leading to anarchy and mob rule.

Pete Zermanshek, a retired firefighter and City of London guide, explains the phenomenon of a firestorm:

“A firestorm is when the fire gets so large that it sets up its own convection currents, so it is literally sucking in air from all around it...” ([17:12])

The intense heat created conditions where fires seemed to ignite spontaneously, adding to the terror and confusion.

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The Search for a Scapegoat: Robert Hubert

In the aftermath of the fire, panic and the need to assign blame led to the wrongful accusation and execution of Robert Hubert, a French Catholic watchmaker. Maddie recounts:

“He says he starts the fire in Westminster, but...he arrived in London two days after the fire began.” ([40:51])

Despite evidence pointing to Thomas Farriner's bakery as the origin, Hubert was coerced into confessing under pressure, reflecting the era's rampant anti-Catholic sentiment and xenophobia.

Anthony expresses frustration over the miscarriage of justice:

“...when people use these situations to satisfy their own weird, xenophobic or misogynistic or whatever it is...” ([27:24])

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Aftermath and Rebuilding Efforts

Following the fire's cessation on September 5, 1666, King Charles II took a hands-on approach to rebuilding London. Maddie describes the transformation:

“...rebuilding really, really quickly... This is now going to be the London of architects like Christopher Wren...” ([47:16])

The reconstruction prioritized stone buildings over the previously prevalent wooden structures, incorporating classical designs inspired by ancient Rome. Christopher Wren's restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral emerged as a symbol of hope and resilience, replacing the devastated Gothic structure with a beacon of architectural ambition.

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Legacy and Perception of 1666

The year 1666, marked by the Great Fire and subsequent natural disasters like a powerful tornado in Lincolnshire, fostered a belief that it was a "cursed year." Anthony connects this sentiment to the broader context of religious and political upheaval:

“...they were waiting for retribution. And retribution in this world, especially in the religious context of the 17th century...” ([43:26])

This collective anxiety contributed to the heightened fear of Catholicism, culminating in the execution of Robert Hubert and the eventual Glorious Revolution of 1688.

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Conclusion

Anthony and Maddie reflect on the profound transformation London underwent due to the Great Fire. While the episode concludes with the city's physical rebuilding, it also underscores the lingering social and political scars that shaped future generations. The hosts emphasize the enduring lessons from this historical catastrophe, highlighting the vulnerabilities and resilience of urban societies in the face of disaster.

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Notable Quotes:

• Maddy Pelling ([00:00]):
  “The sky has glowed red all night. Despite the early hour, the narrow streets of London are crowded with people running, riding heaving carts, shouting instructions...”

• Pete Zermanshek ([17:12]):
  “A firestorm is when the fire gets so large that it sets up its own convection currents, so it is literally sucking in air from all around it...”

• Maddy Pelling ([40:51]):
  “He says he starts the fire in Westminster, but...he arrived in London two days after the fire began.”

• Anthony Delaney ([27:24]):
  “...when people use these situations to satisfy their own weird, xenophobic or misogynistic or whatever it is...”

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Final Thoughts:

This episode of "After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal" offers a comprehensive exploration of the Great Fire of London, blending meticulous historical analysis with engaging storytelling. By spotlighting primary accounts, archaeological evidence, and the tumultuous human responses, Anthony and Maddie provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the disaster's multifaceted impact on London and its people.

Transcript

[Maddie]

Hi everyone, it's Maddie here. Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that we recorded today's episode Part two of a mini series we've put out on the Great Fire of London before the terrible events in California. To all of our amazing listeners who've been affected by the disaster there and are still being affected by its aftermath, please know that our thoughts are with you at this time.

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[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

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[Maddie]

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[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

I was wearing snow pants lying under Stephen Colbert.

[Maddie]

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[Anthony]

I've heard of Vanderpump Rules. I don't know what it is, so.

[Maddie]

Listen to We Signed an NDA. Wherever you listen to podcasts, ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com 4:00am Monday, 3 September 1666 Samuel Pepys is awake, much like the rest of London. He's in his nightgown, sitting on a cart piled high with his plate and best things struggling now towards Bethnal Green and the house of Sir William Ryder, who's offered to look after his friend's belongings in case Pepys house should fall to the flames. The sky has glowed red all night. Despite the early hour. The narrow streets of London are crowded with people running, riding heaving carts, shouting instructions. Everyone who has any strength at all has something on their back, scurrying and pushing past each other, weighed down under chests, jars, furniture, tools and clothing. Peeps has to turn back again and again as the crowds choke up the way ahead. This city that is used to living cheek by jowl in a seething mass is breaking down into disorder, falling apart as fire consumes it. Yesterday, Pepys had seen the Mayor of London, Bloodworth, in a blind panic, claiming there was nothing he could do, that nobody was listening to him. Then Bloodworth had walked off to go home and rest, never to reappear and take back his office. No one was in charge now, or so it seemed. Anarchy was spreading amongst the flames, with burglaries, deliberate arson and mob rule taking over. On the back of Pepys groaning cart, beneath the dawn dyed red with fire, amongst the yelling and fighting, the pushing through narrow posterns and blocked alleys, the city of London is teetering on the edge of chaos.

[Anthony]

Hello there and welcome back to After Dark. I am Anthony.

[Maddie]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony]

And this is the second and final episode in our miniseries on the Great Fire of London. And what a story it truly has been so far. There's been. So you think you know these histories, but then little, I mean, for want of a better word, sparks of information come through. And again, Pete, our fireman, was one of the people that was really interesting to learn from in our previous episode and we'll be hearing from him again in this episode. But just before we get back into it, Matty, I just want to rec some of the information that we have from episode one. So we're in 1666, which is, you know, six years after the Restoration of Charles II. You have said in episode one that some people thought that this might potentially be a cursed year. We have plague, we have fear. The city is on its knees in many ways before the fire even starts. But once the fire starts in Pudding Lane in Thomas Farriner's house, it very quickly takes hold. Fire spreads, panic spreads. And then we've been hearing from intermittently in episode one and now again here in episode two, Samuel Pepys, who's witnessing and then involved in some of the important milestones of this fire and some of the decision making that's happening about trying to get this fire to stop and the bad decision making that comes from the Lord Mayor, not to create firebreaks that we were talking about in episode one. So if you don't know, firebreaks are potentially something that you could knock down a house, for instance, Mattie was telling us so go back and listen to episode one, of course, if you haven't already listened to that. But these are dry, windy conditions in 1666. So this fire is spreading, continues to spread, and things are looking very serious indeed.

[Maddie]

Yeah, it's a perfect storm of things, isn't it? It's this climate that's already fearful, mistrustful. There have been months of people dying left, right and center across the city from plague. The streets have been empty of everything but dead bodies, really. You know, death is very proximate in this city. Horror is very proximate in this city. And now we have this disaster spreading and I suppose, sort of illuminating, literally lighting up the spaces that have been darkened and blackened by this disease and by all of this tragic circumstance. We have people like Pepys and many others like him rushing to see the fire because it's this incredible spectacle, at least to begin with. You know, people get onto boats on the Thames and are able to watch as it spreads. And it is, from our modern perspective, a very cinematic experience.

[Anthony]

I guess it's difficult when you spend so much time working on the documentation that's linked to Samuel Pepys, you know, undergrad MA or whatever it is. And so we have a lot of historians have, oh, God, here, Samuel peeps again. But nonetheless, his account is hugely, hugely important. But just let's kick him to the side for just a second. Are there other accounts. Are there other people leaving us accounts of this and how have they been recovered? I would imagine it comes from one relatively stable portion of society, rather than. We don't have the baker's account, I'm assuming, but give us an insight of the accounts that are left.

[Maddie]

I think what you're saying, Anthony, is the primary sources that survive are from rich white men. That's what I'm saying, and you'd be correct. Yeah. So the other writer that we have a record from, that's the sort of. The other main source that people draw on when they talk about the Great Fire is John Evelyn. He was a writer, he was a courtier and he was a minor government official, a little bit like Pepys, which is, of course, why Pepys gets pulled into the organisation around trying to put the fire out and why he's been given it instructions by the King. Evelyn had played witness in the form of his diary. Like Pepys, he was a prolific diary writer and he'd play witness to events like the execution of Charles I. He'd lived through the rule of Oliver Cromwell and the eventual restoration in 1660. So he's someone who is actively looking at the world around him. He's very interested in documenting experiences. So of course he, like Pepys, is going to document what's happening in London in this moment. And we're going to hear from him in this episode as well. I think it's interesting and important as well to remember the voices of people caught up in the fire whose testimonies don't survive today or were never set down on paper. One of the interesting things I found from episode one actually was thinking about the way that Pepys becomes aware of the fire at first is that his maids have sat up all night in the attic of the house that he owns, watching it from afar, watching the fire spread out of the window. And when we think about the 17th century domestic space, that interior world that is so organized by hierarchy and choreography in terms of which rooms you're allowed to go into, what tasks you perform there, who has power where, when the fire hits those spaces and destroys them, those hierarchies are completely destroyed, or at least upended temporarily. And out on the street, we've got house owners, we've got merchants, we've got servants, we've got homeless people, we've got people running from brothels, we've got people drunk from taverns, all walks of life, all statuses, and all parts of that patriarchal hierarchy that exists and governs the 17th century world. All that is being upset and turned upside down. And how fascinating it would be if we could speak to some of those maids who watched from the window of Pepys's attic room or others like them. And of course, we don't have those. So that's something to bear in mind, that the version of the fire we get comes from these men who have enough power and connection and money to watch at a safe distance. The other thing, of course, is the archaeology. There is a burnt layer in London's archaeology that archaeologists have looked at and all kinds of objects have been discovered from this moment, this fire in 1666. And it just speaks to the devastation and the intensity of the heat. So a lot of these objects are now in the Museum of London collection and the Museum of London, for anyone who's never been, it's absolutely incredible. It's been closed for, I think, the last couple of years and I believe it's reopening in 2025. It's changed its location. It's now going to be in Smithfield Market. And some of the objects that it has, the Great Fire, include things like a huge lump of Melted iron hooks that are, you know, tiny little circular rings really of iron that have been melded into this large pile. And it just speaks to that devastation and the fire destroying everything. You know, that was probably from someone's workshop or something, and it's ended up as this unusable blob of metal. Peeps. In his diary as well, he describes seeing the glass in windows melting and literally pouring into the street. When I was talking to my dad, who is a retired fireman, about the intensity of the great fire and the fierceness, I suppose, the fearsomeness of that, one thing that he told me about was this process of pyrolysis which. And bear with me, because I am not a scientist or a fireman, I am simply a historian. As I understand it, it's when fire is so hot that it causes the objects nearby that are not yet on fire to vaporize. And that vapour becomes a fuel in its own right and it is set fire to. And so things can appear as though they are spontaneously catching fire. And that absolutely would have happened in the great fire of London. So you've got not only the flames licking their way through the buildings, but the heat now creating the intensity that it's catching things that are not yet in contact with it. And it's melting even the glass in the window panes. It's extraordinary.

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[Anthony]

But let's return to some of the recorded evidence again. You mentioned peeps there. But let's look at what Evelyn has to say and some of the insights he can give us. Somebody. If you can lead us on that journey, that'd be great.

[Maddie]

All through Monday and Tuesday, the fire grew whipped up by the wind and carried from street to street over the burning rooftops. The wharves along the Thames had by now formed a wall of fire more than a thousand feet long, the city behind it burning bright. And while all was busily being turned into smouldering rubble. John Evelyn, like Samuel Pepys and others, walked through the scene, drawn by a compulsion to see and witness London's fall. He saw the grand six storey buildings on Cheapside reduced to ash and the ancient city gate of Ludgate charred and hollowed. He watched as prisoners held inside jail walls escaped, their jailers long gone at the first smell of fire. He saw Baynard's Castle, once home to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, swallowed by the inferno. The heat so intense it seemed to ignite the air itself. The conflagration was so universal, wrote Evelyn, and people so astonished and despondent that they hardly stirred to quite quench it. There was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation and the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people. The fall of towers, houses and churches was like a hideous storm. As people lost their homes, thousands began to take shelter in tents in the open spaces outside inside the city, surrounded by their scattered and stained belongings. Ironically, the Navy sent them biscuits to eat, quite possibly those baked by Thomas Farriner of Pudding Lane. What must it have felt like to sit there stunned, looking back at the city as it burned the whole sky red, as if the heavens themselves had been set alight to look back at the hellscape of London, listening to the sound of metal bending and creaking, windows shattering, and even the blast of gunpowder as houses were preemptively destroyed. God grant my eyes may never behold the like, wrote Evelyn as he saw what felt to him. 10,000 houses all in one flame.

[Anthony]

Not the biscuits, Maddie, not the Navy giving the biscuits while the town is burning.

[Maddie]

It's such a sad, ironic twist, isn't it? Also from the sound of them, is that what you'd want as your comfort food once your house has been destroyed?

[Anthony]

Right. So at this point, I feel I need to throw back to Pete Zermanshek again. So we heard from Pete in episode one. He has worked for the London Fire Brigade for 31 years before he retired, and now he runs walking tours of the city of London and is hugely invested in the history of the Great Fire.

[Pete Zermanshek]

By the time we get to Tuesday afternoon, things really have become absolutely dire for London. The fire has now become so large, it would be classified today as a firestorm. Now, a firestorm is when the fire gets so large that it sets up its own convection currents, so it is literally sucking in air from all around it. And climatic conditions, things like wind direction, actually become less significant. Because the fire has got a mind of its own. I've never experienced a firestorm, but with the wind or the air being drawn into the fire, the people standing around the fire might not actually feel too uncomfortable because you've got a cool breeze if you like, coming past you. But what you wouldn't be able to tell is which direction is the fire going in. Because as you're looking at it, the wind's coming from behind you, but the fire is still coming towards you. They would never have experienced anything like this. Even during the Blitz. They never completely created a firestorm by blitzing the City of London in 1940. And the intensity became so great that I think it was on Tuesday of the Great Fire. They had actually created a firebreak 20 houses wide at Cheapside, near Mercer's hall in Ironmonger Lane. They would have probably made that gap and felt very proud of what they've been able to do. The fire jumped that gap. Let's say you'd left the city and you'd managed to get onto one of the hills, Hampstead or Parliament, Hillfield, somewhere like that. What you'd have seen is a solid plume of black smoke coming out from the City of London. It wouldn't have been lots of little fires. This would have appeared as one mass of smoke coming straight up out of the city. Because the heat of the fire will make the convection currents go straight up. It's not going to linger around the ground, it's going straight up into the air. And from a distance, I think the full horror of what has happened would be apparent. You would realize that the whole of the city is alight.

[Maddie]

I genuinely just got goosebumps when Pete said about the fire jumping the 20 house gap. I mean, that that's genuinely frightening, that's horrifying.

[Anthony]

And also the phrase a firestorm, like, it's kind of petrifying, but it also becomes monstrous. I was thinking this idea that it's taking on person like qualities is disturbing, right?

[Maddie]

It is. And I think one of the things that would have shocked Londoners so much was not only the destruction of property and the threat to life. And we will talk about the threat to life and how many people did reportedly lose their lives in this disaster. But it would also be the destruction of landmarks, things that we've spoken about, people's familiarity with the city according to landmarks, their understanding of this urban space according to those landmarks, their knowledge of them and how they interacted with other buildings. And one of the landmarks that is absolutely decimated by the fire is St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a building now that we all know. You can picture it with this great dome that is the rebuilt version made after the fire. Anthony, we've got an image here created again by Wenceslas Holler of the original St. Paul's Burning, or certainly the version of the cathedral that was there in 1666. I'm sure it's on an older site, but tell us what's happening in this image and give us a sense of the scale of this.

[Anthony]

It is actually quite a detailed and beautiful in its own way image. It's a black and white print, it's rectangular across the top we have a Latin scroll in the plumes that are. Are coming up from the flames below. But we'll get to that in a second. And my Latin's very rusty, but I think alluding to perish in the fall. So it's alluding to the city basically crumbling on St. Paul's in particular. So this is old St. Paul's as Mattie was describing, come down from that scroll and you see the plumes, as I say, the dark plumes that Pete was just describing there. You can see these are not white plumes, they're etched dark. Then beneath them we see the flames licking up. And those flames are coming from the most interesting and beautiful looking Gothic building. You can see the buttresses, you can see the windows, you can see all of the towers and the small chapels across. And this is what St. Paul's would have been as much of a landmark then as it is now, of course, probably even more so because now we have all those modern buildings that it stands in line with or well adjacent to, whereas in those days this was the skyline. So it's a real haunting image, but it's so finely rendered. That's one of the things that I'm. I'm really intrigued by.

[Maddie]

Do you know what it reminds me of? Notre Dame burning. I mean, that was so shocking to see. I remember just watching that on the news from the uk. But imagine that's happening, but also the city around you is burning. It's. It's really hard to comprehend. John Evelyn in his diary, describes St. Paul's being burned. He says the stones of Paul's flew like grenados. I think he means grenades, the lead melting down the streets in a stream and the very pavements of them glowing with a fiery redness so as no horse nor man was able to tread on them. That's quite the image.

[Anthony]

That's rivers of heat, rivers of. It's almost like lava, isn't it?

[Maddie]

It absolutely is. And this is a building not only incredibly important, as you say, Anthony, in the skyline, this is a building of God. This is an incredibly important religious centre in the city at the time. And this is already a year that people feel is cursed in some way. There's been the plague in the months before. Is this a punishment from God? Is this a sign that God is not happy? And if so, what is he not happy with? Is he not happy with the execution of Charles I in 1649? Is he not happy with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660? Is there something else that the people of England have done to anger him at this point? This must have felt not only destructive and terrifying as a spectacle, but genuinely apocalyptic, I think.

[Anthony]

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that's standing out to me here is that we keep saying, it's still getting worse. It's going on, it's getting worse again, it's getting worse again. Nothing's stopping this. Surely there must be somebody in charge here, Maddie. Surely Charles ii, despite the fact that he's in Oxford, he must be aware of this by now. What's being done, who's managing this?

[Maddie]

So the King is back in London at this point anyway, but he has spent so many months out of his capital city that it must have felt disastrous to him to return only for it to burn to the ground. The King does order troops from various parts of the city to start directing people, to start moving people away from the path of the fire, but also to create these firebreaks that we've been talking about. John Evelyn, he's a minor government official, so of course he's going to praise the King, but he does note the King's presentness, the fact that he steps up to command in this circumstance. So the King has to take charge of it, because, as we've seen, the sort of officials at local parish levels, even the Lord Mayor of the city, they failed in this circumstance. So it really is down to the King. Now. The troops that are sent out are tasked with also preserving particular buildings. So obviously some have got to come down to create the firebreaks, but some are so integral to the city's infrastructure and the life of the city, the symbolism of the city as well. So things like St. Bart's Hospital in Smithfield and also the Tower of London, soldiers are sent there specifically to protect those buildings. They must not be touched by the fire. We've talked as well about the presence of the Navy, not only being fed by the little dry, sad biscuits coming out of Thomas Farriner's bakery, but later on offering those same biscuits and other sustenance to some of the refugees who are already setting up these little tented camps on the edge of the city. The Navy are also called in now to start pulling the houses down, not by hand, as people have been doing at this point. It's simply too slow. They simply cannot keep up with the movement of the fire. Now instead, they're blowing them up with explosives. They're using gunpowder. So not only have you got this city burning and the immense heat and the roar of the flames, the cracking of these timber buildings, you've now got large, loud explosions happening as well. There's tension in the city in terms of the destruction that's being preemptively carried out. Some of the city's wealthiest, as you might be able to guess, are not thrilled about some of their own homes being blown up by the Navy, who would be. And so the King is making these decisions in real time with his advisors and with the. The kind of officials that people like John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys work with. They are witnessing not only the disaster, but the administration that's going on behind it. And so you get this reactive governance, this reactive managing of the situation. I think it draws Londoners together in some ways, but already there are cracks beneath the surface. People are getting frustrate. People are looking for someone to blame.

[Anthony]

It strikes me that, you know, we've never had anything that's comparable to this, that we can know exactly what was happening in the city at this time. But it does strike me that there is opportunity for nefarious ongoings in the midst of this fire, using the fire as cover. We see similar things, let's say, when we see protests that turn into looting and the protests are used as a cover for looting. Do we have any examples of those kind of things happening during the fire?

[Maddie]

We absolutely do. And, you know, as you say, it's sort of universal human nature, isn't it? Sadly, yes. So there are mobs that grow up around the city, groups of people who arm themselves, first of all, to protect their homes and their property from maybe the Navy coming to blow up their house or concerned citizens coming to pull it down by hand. But also these mobs that are now armed are also going to burgle and loot other people's houses. They're forcing their way into houses that aren't even on fire and stealing things. There's also a xenophobic element to this. We mentioned at the beginning of episode one, the Anglo Dutch War is going on. There's huge mistrust and there's fear of French spies, there's fear of Dutch spies. There's particular fear around Catholics in this moment as well. So all this is contributing to an environment that is a tinderbox within a great firestorm. You know, this is not necessarily going to end well. There are individual examples of near violence or serious violence that we do know about. And I imagine for every one of those, There are probably 10, 20 examples that have been lost to history or were never simply witnessed or recorded. One of the King's courtiers decides at the height of the fire that he simply cannot stay away from his mistress. This is his priority in this moment. And so he hops on a horse and sets off across the city. And a mob catch sight of him and are so enraged that he's riding around in all his finery in this moment, when the city's burning and being destroyed and their homes being lost, that they try and lynch him. And the Duke of York, the King's brother, has to ride up with his troops and save this courtier. Other people are not so lucky. There's one woman, and I came across this story. I've included her in my book. She's from the first chapter of my book, actually. There's a woman who is caught by a crowd. Now she is lifting up her apron, her skirt, and protecting a bunch of little chicks, little baby chickens that she owns or has found during the disaster. And she's holding them in her skirt to try and escape the fire. She's trying to take them to safety. And a mob pass her, and they think that she is carrying fire grenades in her skirt. And they attack her and they cut off both of her breasts.

[Anthony]

The thing is, they didn't think she was carrying fire grenades. They couldn't possibly have had. They were just violent curs. Like, this shit really annoys me. And this whole section has annoyed me. Because you know what we need to look into, actually, Somebody needs to look into the history of fear in Britain through the ages. Because one thing that is absolutely key is the fear of a foreigner. Every time, Maddie, we talk about any of these histories. We talk about the Jack the Ripper history, we talk about the Great Fire of London. What else? Like, name anything, any of these big histories where there's tumult, there's tension. We always say, of course, there's a great fear of Jewish immigrants. Of course, there's a great fear of the Irish immigrant, of Course there's a great fear of black people in London at this time. And it's, guys, get your shit together and stop loving off women's breasts. Like, this is just so infuriating. Like, I know the backdrop is this devastating thing, but like when people use these situations to satisfy their own weird, xenophobic or misogynistic or whatever it is, and people roll their eyes saying, oh, somehow they made the great fire of London into a thing about misogyny. They're lobbing off somebody's breasts, for God's sake. Like, get a grip of yourselves. The city is burning.

[Maddie]

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. I think it comes down to that destruction or that upsetting, that disruption of hierarchy in that moment, that this world operates according to these so called polite ideals that it has, you know, the head of the household, it has servants and masters and mistresses, it has courtiers, everything and everyone is ranked according to their place in the world. And if they don't step outside of that place, everything appears, on the surface at least to be fine. And what the fire does, because as you said earlier, Anthony, it's indiscriminate. It just burns through everything. It destroys everything, including that hierarchy. And suddenly when that is turned upside down, people find opportunity to transgress in ways that are nefarious. And of course I'm not advocating for the hierarchy to be in place, but it's that disaster and that disruption that allows people to act like this and just step outside of the roles or the constraints of a so called civilised society. Which of course comes with its own caveats and its own dark underlying problems. It's so fascinating to me that people behave like this across history. You know, I spent a lot of time looking at the Gordon riots in 1780 and it's exactly the same thing over seven days. The city of London is subject to mob violence, mob rule. Houses are burned down, houses are looted, people are attacked. And there's a political backdrop to it. Yes, but also there are just criminal gangs and individual opportunists who just commit atrocities for the sake of it. And you know, we can trace that through to our own modern day. And it's, yeah, it's, it's depressing but very, very interesting that there is a sort of a through line there throughout the centuries.

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[Anthony]

What is inevitable about this? Because I'm in London right now and it is no longer burning, so I know this fire comes to an end. So Maddie, tell us how that comes about.

[Maddie]

Around 11pm on Tuesday night, the wind, which had been stoking the flames for days, finally veered round to the south and the fire at last began to die down. On the following day, Wednesday, the fourth day of the Great Fire, Samuel Pepys climbed to the top of a church steeple, people embarking, and looked out at the saddest sight of desolation he ever saw. The city was a smoldering mass of charred embers, still burning in places, the rubble in its wake glowing like brimstone. When he sat down to write his diary that night, Pepys placed on his desk beside him a piece of glass he'd found earlier that day. He looked it over now, hesitating as he put quill to parchment. It had come from the window of a chapel destroyed in the fire and had melted and buckled so terribly under the heat that it looked to his eyes like a crumpled piece of paper. Something, he wasn't sure what, had compelled him to pocket it and keep it safe. He looked at it now and reflected on all that had passed over the last four days. All across the city, other people were like peeps, finally coming up for air, the smoke in their lungs clearing and taking stock of just what it was they had individually and collectively lost. And as they did so, a reckoning began to brew. Someone must be to blame. In the camps of homeless refugees that now surrounded London, people debated what or who it was that had started the blaze. Was it a papal plot? Was it the Dutch? The fire itself might be extinguished, but an inferno of rumours was just beginning to heat up.

[Anthony]

This leads us on to something that's also quite aggravating. Oh, this is just Anthony being annoyed episode, but we've encountered this as well before. People insist on a villain and they want it to be as simple and as straightforward as possible. Who is responsible? And it's not so much about responsibility in a lot of cases as it is about blame. Because somebody must be punish punished. Because so much devastation has occurred. That punishment is the only thing that people can possibly think to enact. And actually, you know, like, we've kind of been talking about Maddie, There is so much going on here that it's very difficult, I'm gonna say, at this point, to blame any one person or thing or event for the way this unfolds. Nonetheless, people are looking for people to blame, because, again, that's one of the less attractive parts to humanity. So who, Maddie, dare I ask? This is going to annoy me. I know it is. Who are people looking to blame? Who's getting blamed for this?

[Maddie]

Well, several people come into the frame. And I think you've hit the nail on the head there by saying that it is the sheer destruction, it's the sheer scale of this that means people want to find that villain. At the end of the fire, 13,000 buildings have been destroyed. That's 86 churches, not including St. Paul's Cathedral. 50 livery company houses, which is, you know, incredib. Those are the backbone of the mercantile commercial community in London. 80,000 to 100,000 people are now homeless. That is a sixth of the city's population in this moment. There are refugee camps set up in Lincoln's Inn fields and around this belt around London to accommodate them. Of course, that's a temporary measure. Where are these people going to go? It's absolute chaos. There are only six people who are thought to have died in the fire. And I think that's an interesting statistic. We know that, yes, the fire sweeps through the city. Sometimes it moves very quickly, but sometimes it doesn't. And I think on the one hand, it presents this deadly threat, but people are able to get out of the way. Their belongings are destroyed. But I would challenge it a little bit. And I would say this is a city that has immense poverty. There are people living undocumented, unwitnessed, on its streets, hidden in its storehouses, its warehouses down by the water, those warehouses full of gunpowder and whatever else. And I think there's a world in which a lot of these people, perhaps sleeping, perhaps inebriated, die of, I don't know, smoke inhalation before the flames reach them, and the evidence of them is just destroyed, and that's the end of that. And we don't know that they existed or that they died in the fire. So I would challenge the number six just based on that suspicion alone. By the time the fire is finished. I mean, John Evelyn describes walking through the rubble in the days afterwards. And he says, I went again to the ruins for it. Was now no longer a city. There is this feeling that London itself has been destroyed. The heart of the city, its soul, its commerce, its ambition, its culture is gone. It's completely gone. So of course they're going to look for people to blame. There's one person in particular who comes up as a potential villain.

[Anthony]

I suppose this is going to be good. Somebody has named a person. Right, go on, give me the profile of this person. This person's not English. I'm going to say that from the get go.

[Maddie]

Yeah. You've again hit the nail on the head. I'd never heard about this and I read about this in researching this episode and as soon as I found that one person been blamed, I was immediately like you, Anthony, annoyed, but also just completely confused by how anyone would think this would be legitimate. So this is a man called Robert Hubert, or Hubert, I suppose he's a French Catholic watchmaker. Of course. A foreigner and Catholic.

[Anthony]

A Catholic in the 17th century? God, no.

[Maddie]

Yeah, exactly. Immediately, no. He's a watchmaker from Rouen. He's accused of starting the fire at Westminster and he's arrested and made to confess. Now, now what? So he says he starts the fire in Westminster, but in this changing event on the ground, it becomes widely known eventually that the fire did start at Pudding Lane. And so he's made to change his confession and he's made to say that he threw a fire grenade through the window of the bakery. It gets worse. The baker, Thomas Farriner, and his daughter Hannah, both signs a document accusing Robert Hubert of doing this.

[Anthony]

I presume they've never heard this man before in their entire life. We don't know.

[Maddie]

Absolutely. I mean, presumably not. Presumably not. They don't know him. I can tell you why they don't know him. Because in reality, he arrived in London two days after the fire began.

[Anthony]

Why would Hubert do this? It doesn't actually make any sense. Why would he. Why would he admit to starting the Great Fire of London when we are as certain as we can be that he absolutely did not?

[Maddie]

Well, it's really interesting and it's really hard to get to who he was. So my first thought when I read about him was that he must have been tortured, that, you know, he's arrested as a scapegoat and made to say these things. But there is a suggestion that during his trial, whether he was guilty of anything or nothing, his mental state was really deteriorating. And we know that the Lord Chancellor offers his opinion. He calls him a poor, distracted wretch, weary of his life and Someone who chose to part with it in this way. So it's possible that he is chosen by the mob, by the locals who accuse him to be the scapegoat, because he is a figure that they don't like. Perhaps he has mental illness. We know that he's a French immigrant, we know he's a Catholic, but certainly his mental health deteriorates after he's arrested. And so he admits to all these things and says whatever is asked of him, essentially. I mean, it's incredibly tragic, I suppose Thomas Farriner and Hannah Farriner's testimony against him is a huge part of this. And of course, they say that he did it. You know, they don't want to be held responsible for what's happened. The truth is they went to bed and their fire, you know, possibly hadn't died out enough, or a spark fell and caught something else. You know, it's a terrible disaster, but they don't want to be responsible for it. So Robert Hubert is put on trial, and I'm sorry to say he will eventually be executed for this. So he loses his life. So in some ways, he is the seventh person to die in the Great Fire of London.

[Anthony]

I did not know somebody was executed for doing the Great Fire of London.

[Maddie]

Absolutely. And the suspicion against Catholics continues after the fire because a plaque is actually put on the wall in Pudding Lane when it's being rebuilt, claiming that Catholics started the fire. It's just there in the city landscape.

[Anthony]

I didn't know somebody was executed for not know that.

[Maddie]

I know it's fascinating that. That history has been lost from this. This overall story. So in terms of the aftermath of this and the sort of the legacy of it. Anthony, let's return to this idea of 1666 as a cursed year, as the miraculous year, as the poet John Dryden called it. Do you understand from the mindset of the 17th century, why people might have felt that way?

[Anthony]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and not just in the context of what had happened, say, in the last 30 years as well, or 20 years anyway. So, you know, we have the civil wars in the 40s and execution of Charles the First. You cannot underestimate the impact that that has on the mindset of the English people, certainly the London crowd, the London mob, you are effectively taking the head off God by doing that, by killing Charles the First. And so all bets are off now. Nothing is sacred, nothing is safe. Of course, St. Paul's would burn because you take the head from a God, essentially, or God on earth. So, yeah, I can Totally see that. It's almost like they're waiting, right. They're waiting for retribution. And retribution in this world, especially in the religious context of the 17th century, is certainly something that's very to the fore of the mindset. Punishment, retribution. So. So, yeah, it makes total sense and it makes for, you know, people, I think you said, Mattie, a perfect storm. We've talked about Firestorm, but it brings together these elements of what's needed to make this such an iconic history.

[Maddie]

Interestingly, and I think this is fascinating, I'm not making a claim for this year being a cursed year, but I think this is just an interesting detail. So obviously we have the Great Fire of London in September of that year, at the end of October, a month later, the most powerful tornado ever recorded in English history hits Lincolnshire and just wipes out several villages with winds of more than 113 miles an hour. That's 346 kilometers per hour. So there's just a sense of like ongoing disaster. England is just being battered by everything and you can totally see why people would feel that way now thinking about retribution and the religious element of this story and people possibly worrying that God is angry at. 10th October is chosen as, and I'm quoting here, a day of humiliation and fasting. So a month after the Great Fire of London's ended, there's this national day where people just feel humiliated, feel sorry.

[Anthony]

Are you sure they're not Catholics? Because that sounds very familiar to me, growing up.

[Maddie]

Yeah. As two recovering childhood Catholics here, I can absolutely understand that too.

[Anthony]

A day of humiliation and fasting. God, that's every Monday for me. So dramatic. Why are they so dramatic, Maddie? I mean, I love it.

[Maddie]

That's the dramatic.

[Anthony]

But it's so dramatic.

[Maddie]

It is. And I suppose, yeah, there's sort of then an interesting moral element, isn't there, to this disaster? It's maybe a day of clearing the rubble and planning what's next might have been better. Also in October, Robert Hubert is executed and there's a royal proclamation passed that banishes Catholic priests.

[Anthony]

Priests.

[Maddie]

So the feeling of anti Catholicism is so strong in England and we know that this is only going to continue to grow in the end of the 17th century, building up to 1688 and the glorious Revolution when James II is supposedly. He's accused of being a secret Catholic and he's deposed by William and Mary. So this moment has a huge effect in terms of the devastation in the city, but also these knock on political and moral and religious elements to it.

[Anthony]

Now, Maddy, you and I are Georgian historians first and foremost, and this is Stuart history. But what we know as Georgian historians is that during the 18th century, we see this period of growth and rebuilding and really forming the city, the London that many of us know today based on Georgian tastes and humor. So we know that rebuilding occurs. But can you give us a glimpse into the initial rebuilding that happens as quickly as possible after the fire itself?

[Maddie]

Yeah. So they made plans to rebuild really, really quickly. So on the 11th of September, so just a few days after the fire's put out, John Evelyn actually visits the king at Whitehall, and he's let into his intimate chambers with other advisors, and they sit and look at the plans for about an hour, and they talk through how to rebuild the city. Obviously, the rebuilding program is going to take a while. The city burned for six months. It still, you know, was glowing. The embers were glowing for six months afterwards. So it was very hard to clear that rubble away and to make room for a new city. Of course, one of the overarching narratives is that the city was then rebuilt in stone. And this is predominantly true. But wooden buildings certainly didn't stop after the great fire, although there was certainly less of it. The thing I think, to say about the new version of London that comes in its place, this is now going to be the London of architects like Christopher Wren. This is a classical city built not in those winding medieval streets with the overhangs and the very sort of, you know, wooden framed buildings, very dark, very dingy, with these little alleyways linking them all together. This is going to be a grid system. It's going to be based on ancient Rome. It's taken from the classical world. It's going to be a city full of big piazzas, large, clear avenues, and that is, to a certain extent, the city that we can see today, and certainly the city we see in the 18th century. And St. Paul's itself, this incredibly symbolic building that's been destroyed in the most terrible way, is rebuilt by Christopher Wren. And it becomes this symbol of hope. It becomes a symbol of architectural ambition, moral ambition, national ambition. It's the first domed building in the city. You know, it has all these innovative elements to it, and it becomes this symbol in the center of all this destruction. And work begins on that really soon and is prioritised. That will be the thing that draws Londoners into a new world, into a new version of their capital city.

[Anthony]

Well, I think that's a good place to leave it. I often do think it's really frustrating, isn't it that we don't get to experience some of those buildings that you're talking about that we've lost. And that's that's essentially due to the Great Fire. But I've also never been to St. Paul's myself, so this now that you've I've never actually been inside. I've been outside, but I've never been inside. So I need to rectify that, especially as you're describing it as this beacon of hope in the wake of the Great Fire of London. But guys, thank you so much for listening to this two parter. And thanks a lot of course to Pete Zermanczyk, our ex firefighter and current City of London guide for his contribution. Once again, as we said in episode one, the City of London Guides have so many different walking tours available that will give you an insight into the history of London. So check out their [e-mail] as ever, give us a shout on the old email after darkistoryhit.com let us know what you thought about this episode or if you have any ideas for future episodes. Give us a five star review wherever you get your podcast, especially if you love After Dark because it helps other people find us and fall in love with the podcast too. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time. Goodbye.

[Maddie]

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[Anthony]

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[Maddie]

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[Anthony]

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[Maddie]

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