Great Fire of London: Who started it?

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Episode: Great Fire of London: Who Started It? Release Date: January 6, 2025

Hosts: Anthony Delaney & Maddy Pelling
Produced by: History Hit

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Introduction & Historical Context

In this gripping episode, hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve deep into one of England's most infamous disasters: the Great Fire of London in 1666. They set the stage by painting a vivid picture of London the day before the fire—a bustling, overcrowded city of narrow streets and wooden houses teeming with life and chaos.

Maddy Pelling ([02:03]) describes London as:

"...a city molded by hundreds of years of inhabitants. Its streets were narrow, formed by closely packed wooden houses with crooked overhangs and swinging shop signs that blotted out the daylight..."

Despite its charm and status as a commercial hub, London was rife with noise, filth, and unsanitary conditions. Yet, it was also a center of commerce and learning, boasting gleaming shops along Cheapside and the mighty Thames River at its heart.

The Origin of the Fire in Pudding Lane

The episode zeroes in on Pudding Lane, the epicenter of the Great Fire. Pudding Lane, named from the medieval term for end trails, was a lively area near the Thames, notorious for its stench and congested pathways. On the evening of September 2, 1666, Thomas Farriner, a respected baker, closed his shop after ensuring his oven fire had died down—a detail later pivotal in tracing the fire's origin.

Anthony Delaney ([14:12]) questions the myth surrounding the fire's origin:

"Did the fire really start in Pudding Lane or is it just a myth?"

Maddy Pelling ([14:31]) confirms:

"You are correct. So, it really did start there. Or so historians and archaeologists believe."

Thomas Farriner's bakery, known as the Royal Bakery, was famed for supplying hard tack to the Royal Navy. Despite Farriner's claims that the bakehouse oven was extinguished, an unforeseen spark ignited the fire, setting off a chain reaction that would engulf London.

The Spread of the Fire

As midnight gave way to the early hours of September 2nd, a dry, hot wind fanned the flames from Farriner's bakery, causing the fire to leap from house to house. Pete Semanczyk, a retired firefighter and current City of London guide, provides expert insight into the fire's rapid spread:

Pete Semanczyk ([24:43]):

"The timbers caught fire, and it's a difficult situation. You are at risk of the building collapsing. That's when you get all the embers being thrown up in the air... it all just becomes bigger and the fire would spread."

The proximity of flammable materials along the Thames wharves amplified the disaster, turning a contained house fire into a sprawling conflagration that devoured 300 homes by morning.

Response and Failures

Efforts to combat the blaze were hampered by inadequate leadership and overconfidence. Maddy Pelling ([29:13]) explains how Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth underestimated the fire's threat:

"He jokes that a woman could piss it out. And with that, he heads off back to bed. This is a mistake."

Despite having tools like buckets, ladders, and the innovative 'squirt'—a large syringe-like device for moving water—Bloodworth's dismissive attitude delayed effective action. The lack of decisive leadership allowed the fire to spiral out of control, highlighting the city's unpreparedness for such a catastrophe.

Personal Accounts: Samuel Pepys

The episode features an evocative excerpt from Samuel Pepys' diary, offering a personal glimpse into the chaos:

Samuel Pepys ([33:39]):

"Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called us up about three in the morning to tell us of a great fire in the city..."

Pepys recounts witnessing the fire's relentless advance from his vantage point on a boat on the Thames, describing how the flames consumed landmarks and instilled widespread fear and uncertainty among Londoners.

Maddy Pelling ([37:17]) reflects on Pepys' observations:

"He saw Londoners scrambling to carry their treasures to safety... the fire creeping around the corners of streets to devour whole houses..."

The Psychological Impact

The hosts emphasize the enduring legacy of the Great Fire, not just in its physical devastation but also in its psychological imprint on Londoners. The fire shattered the collective sense of security in a city already scarred by recent wars and the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War.

Anthony Delaney ([23:44]) muses on the imagery that makes the Great Fire so memorable:

"Little balls of glowing beauty but ferocity that this fire starts to take hold. And there's something even more insipid about that... it's devastating."

Conclusion & Upcoming Episode

As the fire raged on, consuming homes, churches, and businesses, uncertainty loomed over London's future. The episode concludes with Anthony and Maddy setting the stage for the next installment, where they will explore the continued spread of the fire and its aftermath.

Maddy Pelling ([41:35]) teases the continuation:

"Samuel Pepys had taken a boat out onto the Thames and watched from the river for an hour as the conflagration raged in every direction... Trust was disintegrating fast in a city whose face was cracking and burning off."

Listeners are left with a profound understanding of how a single spark can transform a thriving metropolis into a haunted landscape, setting up a compelling narrative for the forthcoming episode.

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Notable Quotes:

• Maddy Pelling ([02:03]):

  "London was also the envy of Europe, a place of commerce and learning."

• Pete Semanczyk ([24:43]):

  "Fire is a living, breathing creature. It eats anything in its path, it breathes oxygen, it generates heat."

• Samuel Pepys ([33:39]):

  "So I down to the waterside and there got a boat and through bridge and there saw an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge."

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Final Thoughts:

This episode masterfully intertwines historical facts with personal narratives, bringing to life the terror and chaos of the Great Fire of London. Through expert commentary and vivid storytelling, Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling engage listeners, offering both educational insights and compelling drama. As they navigate through the intricate details of 17th-century London, the episode serves as a poignant reminder of the fragility of human settlements in the face of nature's fury.

Be sure to tune in to the next episode as the hosts continue to unravel the mysteries and repercussions of the Great Fire of London.

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.

[Maddy Pelling]

Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.

[Anthony Delaney]

Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

[Freddie Wong]

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[Pete Semanczyk]

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[Maddy Pelling]

London, as it stood on the day before the Great Fire started, was a city molded by hundreds of years of inhabitants. Its streets were narrow, formed by closely packed wooden houses with crooked overhangs and swinging shop signs that blotted out the daylight and caused any on horseback to duck perilously as they passed by. Everywhere there was noise and filth. Animal and human slop ran on the pavements. There was overcrowding, fighting, trade, sex. Even the ancient churches dotted about the city, each marking a small parish in the disordered hole, could not regulate this unsanitary and rude rambling place. But London was also the envy of Europe, a place of commerce and learning. There were the gleaming shops of Cheapside and the mighty Thames at its heart. In the midst of all this was Pudding Lane, set close to the river and famously the street where the disaster of 1666 sparked. The lane got its name from the medieval pudding, meaning end trails, and Pudding Lane ran with them, hot with the stench of animals alongside all this colourful human life. The day before the fire started was a hot one, one of many such days that summer in which the temperate weather had baked the scent of the lane until it was overwhelming. Not that it would have put off any hungry Londoners looking for a meal in this part of the city, because among the chatter of the locals, shouts of hot pies and pastries, hot roast beef filled the air. It's to one of the houses from which such cries emanate that we must now turn our focus. About halfway up the lane was a bakery, home to Thomas Farriner, a hard working man popular with the locals and whose contract to supply hard tack, that is small dried biscuits to the Royal Navy allowed him to market as the Royal Baker. As the usual curfew bell Sounded at around 9pm on Saturday 2nd September 1666, Thomas Farriner closed up his shop for the day. Later he would testify that he had checked the fire of his bakehouse oven and that it had died down before he retired to bed early. His daughter Hannah, who preferred a later bedtime around midnight, would swear the same. But as the house slept. Thomas. Hannah. Thomas son, also called Thomas, a journeyman apprentice and a maid, all dreaming in their respective chambers, something terrible had already been put in motion. It was in the darkest hour that the family awoke suddenly and the smell of smoke. Blinking sleep from their eyes, hearts thudding loudly, they were roused from their beds by the terror that stalked the nightmares of all Londoners. Fire Foreign.

[Anthony Delaney]

Welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddy Pelling]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony Delaney]

And in this episode we are exploring the history of all the bakers in London in the 17th century called Thomas. No joking. We're looking at the Great Fire of London. Of course. We're here in London in 1666 and we're stepping into the roaring, smarting heat of one of. I suppose really it's the most memorable and terrifying events in English history. The Great Fire. We'll be doing this across two episodes, delving into the facts and tracing the fire from its supposed origin in Pudding Lane to the last fizzled out ember. And we'll Be looking at what this disaster can tell us about 17th century life. Now, if you're interested in other things that are happening in this decade in England, please do check out our two parter on Ian Plague village as well. So you can go back and check that out. But Maddie, here we are. We've talked about this episode for or these episodes for quite a while. The Great Fire of London.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes, this topic has absolutely been on our list. I day one. It's something I've wanted to do for a really long time, but I'm interested. Anthony, growing up in Ireland, did you study this? Because something that we've discovered as we've gone through this podcast is that the historical education that we've had as children and at university has been quite different, based geographically on where we've been and culturally where we've been. So is the Great Fire of London something on your radar, let's say, like.

[Anthony Delaney]

At primary and secondary school? Absolutely not. Didn't even register. It wasn't. I mean, it was there in the background. I knew it had happened, obviously, but we don't study it in any great detail. It doesn't have much relevance to Irish history, obviously. Although I'm sure there's some Irish link. I bet you the baker was Irish or something. But anyway, what I mean is. No, it doesn't resonate in the same way. It's not as iconic as it is. After I left drama school, I was teaching in primary schools in Haringey in Tottenham, and I was teaching drama. But I would see their history projects in the classrooms and they would have shoeboxes depicting the Great Fire of London. So it was at that point that I really realized, oh, wow, this is iconic with young children. It's really interesting to see this come to fruition in these episodes that has.

[Maddy Pelling]

Unlocked a childhood memory. Shoeboxes, like, made into historic things. I'm pretty sure I made a Tudor house out of a shoebox one time. That's so exciting. Tell me this, when you were teaching in primary school, did you have to sing the nursery rhyme?

[Anthony Delaney]

No, I don't know.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do you not know it?

[Anthony Delaney]

No, I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

[Maddy Pelling]

Can I force you to sing right now?

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, I don't know.

[Maddy Pelling]

It can. Burn it with me.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah, go on.

[Maddy Pelling]

I'm so sorry to anyone for what's about to happen. Okay, so it goes, London's burning, London's burning. So that bit, please.

[Anthony Delaney]

London's burning, London's burning.

[Maddy Pelling]

Fantastic.

[Anthony Delaney]

Thank you.

[Maddy Pelling]

And then it's like it goes Fetch the engines. Fetch the engines.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, I see where this is going. Fetch the engines. Fetch the engines.

[Maddy Pelling]

Fire, fire. Fire. Fire.

[Anthony Delaney]

Fire, fire, fire, fire.

[Maddy Pelling]

Pour on water. Pour on water.

[Anthony Delaney]

Pour on water. Pour on water.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, right, so here we go. London's burning. London's burning. Fetching.

[Anthony Delaney]

London's burning. Fetch the engines. Fetch the engines.

[Freddie Wong]

Fire, water.

[Anthony Delaney]

Fire, water. Pour on water. Pour on water.

[Maddy Pelling]

And we will be taking this show on tour. Okay.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, my God. Okay, I'm sweating after that.

[Maddy Pelling]

I know. I feel quite stressed. I feel like primary school flashbacks of being forced to sing. Okay, so not only am I an incredibly talented singer and that is my karaoke song of choice, but I also have other skin in the game. So I grew up being absolutely paranoid that my house would burn down because my dad is now a retired fireman. He spent many years in the fire service, and if anyone else has grown up with a firefighter, as a parent, you'll know. You just get drilled in how to survive that fire. So let me just say, if the fire had started in my house and not Pudding Lane, I would have known what to do. So shame on Thomas Farriner, the baker. And my dad, an actual fireman, was on a day off once, pushing me, a little baby in a pram, through the park in London when he accidentally walked. Walked through a shot of the TV show London's Burning, which was about. It was a drama about firemen, and they kept it in. So me and my dad, an actual fireman, were on the show London's Burning. I'm famous.

[Anthony Delaney]

The Maddie trivia just keeps on coming.

[Maddy Pelling]

Someone add it to my Wikipedia page. That does not exist.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, my God. I'm obsessed with this. Maddie, give me some historical context. I don't want to know about you on TV.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, back to the history. So we're in 1666. We know from our EAM episode that the months before this are dogged by plague, and the city of London has been absolutely devastated. 1666 itself is considered a colossally important year by the people living through it. Not the people looking back on it, but the people living through it. So one astrologer, a guy called Sir George Wharton, warns at the start of the year, and I don't think he would have been very good fun at a New Year's party. He says now 1666 is come. When shall be the day of doom? Not very light. John Dryden, the poet, ever heard of him? Calls this same year. Yeah, he is a bit. Calls this same year the annus mirabilis, the miraculous year. Or the Year of Wonder. And I just want everyone to hold that in their heads as we go through this history, because I think there's this idea in London, in England at the time, that this moment that people are living, it is a colossal disaster. There's something significant about it. Charles II is on the throne. He's the king of England, Scotland and Ireland following the restoration of the monarchy, of course, in 1660. He has spent the last year or so out of the city of London. He's been in Oxford because of the.

[Anthony Delaney]

Plague, with his lovely wigs.

[Maddy Pelling]

With his lovely wigs, importantly, I feel like they'd get saved in the fire. He would absolutely have prioritised them. It's also, though, a time of science and experimentation and new discovery. We don't only have this terrible death and disaster going on. So Isaac Newton, in this moment, is using a prism to split sunlight into the colours of the optical spectrum. And the writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, publishes two major books. The first is a sort of scientific work, but the second one is a proto science fiction work called the Blazing World, which was the bane of my life at university. I look back on it fondly now, but it wasn't fun at the time.

[Anthony Delaney]

And now the name of a very lovely history book by Jonathan Healy. Right, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

Shout out to that book. That's a great book. Yeah, yeah. If you want to know more about this time period. Absolutely. Read that. So we have lots of sort of scientific advancements, but there's immense fear in this period. There's fear of disease, of course, with the plague. There's a fear of foreigners as well. And this extends out onto the street at a local level. In London, the civil wars and all of that violence are only a couple of decades in the past. This is still in living memory. All of that trauma, all of that bloodshed. Currently in 1666, there's the Second Anglo Dutch War going on. Now, this is a naval conflict, primarily, that's being fought between England and the Dutch Republic. That's sort of underpinned by various political and commercial situations that are a bit too complicated to go into here, but so there's a lot of.

[Anthony Delaney]

And when she says complicated, she means boring.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. It's not the most exciting war that's ever happened.

[Anthony Delaney]

No.

[Maddy Pelling]

Importantly, as well, for us, in this story, in England, in the south of England, there's been about 10 months of really serious drought. There's been no rain at all. And of course, this means in a city made of wooden buildings, the conditions are Very, very dry and very perfect for what is going to come. So it's in this context, this climate, this nervous shifting climate, that the fire first sparks up. But let's get into this micro history that we start with. We start not with an entire city on fire, but a fire that is igniting in a baker's on Pudding Lane. The first thing I want to ask Anthony, do you think the fire really did start there or is it just myth?

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, see, now I get very confused with the myths around the Great Fire. So we know, for instance, that one of the myths is that the fire ended up stopping all the plague. And we've learned in a previous episode of After Dark that that wasn't necessarily the case at all. Did it start in Pudding Lane? I think from what I know, the answer to that is yes. Tell me if I'm wrong.

[Maddy Pelling]

You are correct. So. Oh, good. Yeah, it really did start there. Or so historians and archaeologists believe.

[Anthony Delaney]

So as much as we know.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, as much as we know. So in the bakehouse where this begins, we have Thomas Farine, who is a baker. He's also a church warden. Side note, I wonder, do you know the. The bakery chain, Thomas the Baker? I wonder if that's named after him. Maybe it's just in the north of England. Write in and tell me if you know what that is, what that's named after.

[Anthony Delaney]

Never heard of it.

[Maddy Pelling]

I mean, of all the famous bakers, maybe don't name your baking chain after the guy who started the Great Fire of London. But anyway, so we have Thomas. He's living there with his daughter Hannah, and there's certainly a maid in the household in some accounts. We also have his son, also called Thomas, a classic. And we also have a man living in the house who is named as either an apprentice or a journeyman. So someone who would ferry goods around, so he would probably go and distribute the baked goods on behalf of Thomas. And this guy's name was Thomas Dagger, which is not only a great name, but it has been recently discovered by some historians at University of Leicester that Thomas Dagger was probably the person who first discovered the fire in that house. So he was the first person to see what was going to become the Great Fire of London, which is just so tantalising, it's amazing. Yeah, so Thomas himself, Thomas Farinard, the baker and the head of this family, was a really respected member of the community. His bakery was well known. He joined the Worshipful Company of Bakers, which was one of the liveried guilds of the city of London in the 1730s, and by 1749 he had his own shop in Pudding Lane. So he was a savvy businessman. And as we heard in the introduction, the bakery itself was known as the Royal Bakery or the King's Bakery, not because Farriner was making the morning panachocolat for Charles ii, but because he would bake these dried, kind of hard, quite bland biscuits, known as hard tack, that essentially didn't rot, they didn't go off, they would last for ages, and they were fed to the sailors of the Royal Navy. And of course, remember Pudding Lane and the shop there was quite close to the Thames. So we have this household that goes to bed. At least two members we know that, Thomas the father and Hannah the daughter. Check. The bakehouse oven fire has at least died down. And I think we have to remember, and certainly people will know this, if they live in houses with fires. Today, if you have a fire in a fireplace or a grate, even, often it's not completely put out before you go to bed, the embers might be glowing and actually if you come down in the morning, they might still be hot. And on a winter's day, you can relight that fire and sort of keep it going. So I don't think it was necessarily that the bakehouse ovens would be cold to the touch and fully out when they went to bed, but I think they would be under control and just glowing at that point. But at around about 1am on Sunday 2nd September, Thomas Dagger, the journeyman, wakes up to the smell of smoke coming up through the floorboards from the bakery, which is on the ground floor of the house. And he alerts the rest of the family. He shouts that there's a fire. Everyone in the house escapes through a window and upper window, apart from the maid. And the only account I could find of her said that she was simply too frightened to move and so died in the house. And I don't think that's great from the rest of the family, that they just left the maid to die. That doesn't seem wonderful.

[Anthony Delaney]

Not sure if I'd buy it, really, historically, too frightened to move. I don't know. Listen, we'll never know. But it's a weird one, isn't it? It's a strange take on that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Well, I think if we can take anything away from that, if we take it at face value, it's that fire was genuinely terrifying. It was something that haunted the dreams.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, that's true.

[Maddy Pelling]

You know, people who lived in a city that was essentially one big tinderbox that was primarily wooden houses. Certainly in this area. You know, everything packed in close together. It was a terrifying prospect. So there would have been fear felt by all of them. Does that necessarily mean she was too frightened to move? I don't know. Maybe she was injured. Maybe she couldn't get out in time. Maybe she passed out from smoke inhalation. We'll never know the reality of that. But she is the first person to be claimed by the Great Fire of London. At the moment, this is a house fire. This is not a fire that's spreading. This is contained to a single property. It's disastrous for the bakery. It's incredibly dangerous for the family inside who do escape. But that's all it is.

[Anthony Delaney]

At this point, I have a feeling you're going to tell me that changes.

[Maddy Pelling]

A hot, dry wind blew and blew throughout that night. It whistled down Pudding Lane, coaxing the fire from Farina's house to his neighbours, dancing hand in hand with the flames between the wooden overhangs of houses. Soon a house fire had become a street fire. Then an ember spiralled up into the night and was carried towards neighbouring Fish street, one of the main routes into London. It landed on a haystack in the yard of an inn. The blaze spread. Onlookers watched, flames flickering in their eyes as more and more buildings joined the dance, timber frames transforming to red against the night sky. Now, you'd be forgiven for thinking the fact that the fire started so near the River Thames was a good thing, a help even to those trying to fight it in a desperate scramble with buckets of water. But it was, in fact, bad news, and every local there knew why. The wharf buildings by the water were full of stores of tar and pitch hemp and flax. The riverbank was a tinderbox waiting to be lit. By the time morning came, the fire was no longer confined to just Pudding Lane or Fish Street. By now, it had torn through 300 homes and counting, having caught the wharves on the riverbank, a shower of fire drops shooting high over London. As the sparks caught, two churches that had stood since before the Norman conquest were already gone. The beast was loose now and the situation out of control. What had started in a tiny bakery had its jaws around a whole swathe of the city. The only question that remained was, could anything stop it? FOREIGN.

[Freddie Wong]

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[Pete Semanczyk]

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[Anthony Delaney]

You forget, I think, when you're talking about the Great Fire, just how quickly it goes from a house fire, as you described earlier, into something that's significantly more devastating and significantly more widespread. And I said quickly there, but actually, you know, you're talking about something had happened overnight and then the winds were blowing and then there was. So time has elapsed nonetheless, not enough time for people to get this under control. So what do we know about the speed of this, Maddie? Like how quickly is this really spreading?

[Maddy Pelling]

It's a really interesting question and I think we need to understand a little bit about how fire works, how it operates, because it's, you know, thankfully not something that many of us come into contact with on a day to day basis. Now, in order to understand this, to understand how the fire spread, we've actually spoken to Pete Semanczyk, who is a retired divisional officer from the London Fire Brigade. He worked for the fire brigade for 31 years, including working at a fire station that covers the very streets of Pudding Lane and Fish street that we're going to be talking about over the course of this episode. Nowadays, he is a City of London guide and he takes people on walking tours of the area to share his love of its history and his expertise in firefighting. So without further ado, you're now going to hear our producer Freddie chatting to Pete about what the scene would have looked like on Pudding Lane in The early hours of that Sunday morning.

[E]

I think the people close to the fire would have been very, very concerned for their properties, and they'd have been making every effort they could in order to extinguish the fire. People further away would probably have been interested bystanders. Because fires happened all the time in London, and because this is the first time that London totally burned down, we must assume that all the other fires before it were properly extinguished. So they would have been interested to look. I mean, even today, Londoners love a good fire. Probably the contents of the house will be burning first, and then eventually it would be the structure, the beams, the columns that are holding the house up, all of which are made of timber that would start to burn. The use of thatch had been banned since the 13th century, so these would have had proper roof tiles. But people in poorer houses may just have had a board they covered in pitch or tar to make it waterproof, all of which would have burned very quickly. So once the timbers caught fire, it's a difficult situation. You are at risk of the building collapsing. That's when you get all the embers being thrown up in the air. Bits of the building might lean against the building, across the road or to the side, and start the fire going there as well. And because you're close to the docks, any spare space they would have made money on by acting as mini warehouses. So they would have kept flammable materials in their basements, they may have kept it in their attics. So all of that would have carried on and it all just becomes bigger and the fire would spread. To be really close to a large fire can be both exciting and terrifying. You have your training, you have your knowledge, and you've got some idea of what could happen next, what you're expecting to happen next. But fire is a living, breathing creature. It eats anything in its path, it breathes oxygen, it generates heat. You have a good idea what it's going to do. But you know what? Sometimes it does something unexpected.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do you know, I actually feel really moved by Pete's words, because he sounds so much like my dad. The conversations that I've had with my dad when he's told me about his experiences, and especially fire itself being this kind of living thing that can change and shift really quickly, and the situation and the danger level can shift really quickly. And I think for people in the 17th century who only had rudimentary means of fighting a fire, it must have been completely overwhelming and terrifying as this fire suddenly, very, very quickly got out of hand.

[Anthony Delaney]

You know what else struck me there when he was talking about it? There is this very macabre beauty about some of what he was describing. So at one point, he describes this obviously horrendous house collapsing in on top of itself. But in that collapse, the embers being thrown up into. You can imagine the embers being thrown up into the London night sky in the 17th century and just these little sparks then dispersing across the nearby houses and then into the other streets. And it's in these, like, little balls of glowing beauty but ferocity that this fire starts to take hold. And there's something even more insipid about that. Visually captivating. Like he's saying, like, you can't look away because there's something really entrancing about it. But at the same time, it's devastating.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. I mean, it's a spectacle, isn't it? And you can see, you know, Pete speculating there that people may have come to watch it. And I think that's probably true. You know, it was. Fire was one of the worst things that could happen in the city. It was everyone's biggest fear. But it was also this kind of what we would think of today, possibly as a sort of cinematic experience, you know, happening before you in real time. And it must have been exciting, for want of a better word, thrilling, until it was clear that it had gone too far. Yeah. And that. That shift, that change is so terrifying to us.

[Anthony Delaney]

But the other real clear thing that Pete made very obvious there, is that people know how to put fires out. And I would imagine, therefore, that they are also trying to put what becomes the Great Fire of London out as well, Right?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, absolutely. So there were some training, there were some equipment available to people in order to fight a fire in this period. So every parish church would keep things like buckets, ladders, chains that could be used to pull down buildings on fire. There was also something in the 17th century called the squirt. So this was basically like a huge syringe type thing that was made out of brass and it could suck up about nine metres of water. So think again about how close it is to the Thames. It would be manned by two men and a third one would have to push the plunger to get the water to come out onto the fire. We do know that once it becomes clear that the fire is getting worse, the Lord Mayor of the City, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, is called out. He is woken up in his bed and he's called to come to the scene of the fire. But when he Gets there. He's reluctant to do anything. And I've been racking my brains thinking about why this might be. And Pete mentioned a very good reason there, that there must have been other fires in London in the years, the centuries before the great fire that burned it all down. And so he must have felt, to a certain extent, confident that it would be put out. The other thing to say, and we're going to talk about this in more detail across these two episodes, is that one of the ways to stop a fire in its tracks is to create a fire break, so to destroy something in its path so that it can't continue to grow. And you see that on, like, moorland and stuff, when sections of heather are burned, so that any fire that breaks out would stop at that natural point and not continue. And one of the ways to create a firebreak in a city, of course, is to pull down houses. Now, the lord mayor is going to be incredibly unpopular if he starts pulling down houses that are not already on fire. Famously as well. In this moment, he. In talking about the fire as being weak and not a threat, he jokes that a woman could piss it out. He says the fire is that ineffective, a little dainty woman could piss it out. And with that, he heads off back to bed. This is a mistake.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, yeah. That's gonna condemn you to the annals of history, isn't it? I mean, it's interesting that we have such a specific account of his reaction to it. And I agree, Matty, everything that you're saying about him coming out, and you would imagine that there's going to be something to be done here, it's interesting that he was called because actually, why was he called when there are so many fires? Maybe it was just a courtesy that he's called as the mayor, whatever, but that he thinks there's no need for me to be here. What can I do? This is just, you know, an everyday occurrence, or, you know, a very regular occurrence in London anyway. But the other name that's ringing in my head throughout all of this is Samuel Pepys, who is, of course, famous for his diaries that he's left us about life in 17th century London and England more generally. It's really easy to forget that he's also a relatively important civil servant. So he plays a part in the administration of this city, and he will be playing a part in the administration of this fire as well. But everyone who studies the Great Fire at undergrad level, probably even in school, I presume, we read the passages that Pepys has left us and it's a really important source of information for us for what people are experiencing and what they're seeing. I believe we have an extract of that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes. So what you're about to hear is a section of Pepys diary from Sunday 2nd September. So the first official day, the first full day of the fire. It starts in the early hours, 1 or 2am in the morning, as we've heard. Now, Pepys himself doesn't live anywhere near Pudding Lane, but in the night, some of his servants have seen the fire from the top of his house. They can see it happening across the city and they've watched it grow. And they wake him up in the morning and they say, you know, look out the window. Have you seen what's going on? And he's absolutely captivated. And at first, you know, he sort of reasons, well, it's quite far away. It's all going to be fine. But it is clear already that the fire is growing. And you can, I think, hear in Pepys writing in this moment the unease that's being seeded in his mind and the mind of his household.

[F]

Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called us up about three in the morning to tell us of a great fire in the city. So I rose and slipped on my nightgown and went to her window and thought it to be on the backside of Mark Lane at the farthest. But being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off and so went to bed again and to sleep about seven, rose again to dress myself by and by. Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw and that it is now burning down all Fish street by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently and walked to the Tower of London, and there got up upon one of the high places and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire. And an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge. So down with my heart full of trouble to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's baker's house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burnt St Magnus's Church and most part of Fish street already. So I down to the waterside and there got a boat and through bridge and there saw a lamental invisible fire.

[Freddie Wong]

Hi, this is Freddie Wong from Dungeons and Daddies. And this episode is sponsored by Rocket Money.

[Maddy Pelling]

Houston.

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[Pete Semanczyk]

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[Maddy Pelling]

In his mind and the mind of his household.

[Anthony Delaney]

Again, imagery. I think actually what's becoming really clear to me is one of the reasons that this fire endures so much in the popular imagination and in schoolrooms and in history still, is because it lends itself so easily imagery and to impactful imagery. And I'm getting this imagery from Pepys's diary entry there of actually people similar to what Pete described our fireman that we listened to earlier, of people swarming towards the glow slightly and keeping at a relatively safe distance. But like we're seeing this idea of public transport taking you as close as possible to the fire. So again, we have that, like London at this time, and again then in the 18th century, it's known for its spectacle. And somehow this tragic event becomes one of the those spectacles and people can't quite turn away. And Pepys is amongst those people.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, I think that's correct. And I think as well, you know, Pepys heads to the water and the Thames itself is an important character in the story, not least because I suppose it's the safe haven, it's the Elemental opposite of what's happening on the riverbank and beyond. People are heading to it not only to gather water to try and fight the fire, but simply for safety. And people are getting onto boats at this point with their possessions to escape the fire that's coming for them. I think it's fascinating at the end of what Peep says there as well, that the fire is still moving, it's still growing. He watches it from a boat on the Thames. As it takes more and more buildings, it's eating its way through the landscape. Even though Pepys House at this point isn't necessarily that close to the fire at this stage, there must have been a feeling of real nervousness watching it consume all those big landmarks and those buildings and those elements of the riverbank that Pepys and others were so familiar with. You know, this is a city, let's not forget, that is mapped into people's minds according to landmarks, not even necessarily street names, really, but, you know, the building with the funny crooked chimney, or, you know, in this period, literacy rates are low enough that pubs, taverns, brothels, the signs of them are images or sometimes carved objects. So, like, the Red lion might be a literal wooden lion outside, painted red so that people can identify them. And when you look at early books and pamphlets that are printed, it'll say, printed at Such and Such's printers on the corner by the Golden Fleece and the pawnbrokers with the three gold balls above the door. You know, it's a city that's understood in these very local, very material, very visual terms. And that is all being obliterated by the fire. All of that is gone. And how do you understand a city when all of that has disappeared? And I think it would have been not only tragic to see people lose their private property, but to lose this collective space, this layered, wonky, complicated warren of a city. And it's all disappearing, and all that familiarity is gone in a second of the fire.

[Anthony Delaney]

So where have we gotten to? We have a fire that starts at Thomas Farriner's house on Pudding Lane, which is the house itself destroyed very quickly. Pudding Lane is obliterated, more or less. We now see the fire starting to spread. We're hearing these micro histories as we go. News is traveling throughout London. The likes of Samuel Pepys are turning out to see this devastation for themselves. Servants are awakening. They're looking out their windows, and they're seeing from across the river this history that Maddie was just describing and this social and cultural melting pot that Maddie was just describing. They're seeing it fall into ruin. And the devastating thing about this, as Maddy has just hinted towards, is that the fire shows no signs of letting up because the conditions are absolutely perfect for burning to continue and for the fire to spread. So before we leave you for this episode, join us again for episode two, of course, but Mattie's going to give you one final insight into how this fire continue.

[Maddy Pelling]

On the Sunday morning, the first full day of the fire, Samuel Pepys had taken a boat out onto the Thames and watched from the river for an hour as the conflagration raged in every direction. He saw Londoners scrambling to carry their treasures to safety, rats rushing to the water and pigeons reluctant to abandon burning nests, clinging to their perches before tumbling into the flames. He watched the fire creeping around the corners of streets to devour whole houses, clawing its way up church steeples like a terrible beast, clambering to a vantage point from which to survey the city, its prey. After that, Pepys rushed to the King at Whitehall to await instruction. White orders soon followed. He was to go and find Mayor Bloodworth and demand that he start pulling down houses, this time without delay. Pepys found the Mayor on Canning street, famous for its linen shops, all now in tatters, of course, with a handkerchief wound at his face and neck to escape the worst of the smoke. Later on, Pepys would describe how when the Mayor heard the King's message, he cried out like a fainting woman, lord, what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. Then Bloodworth turned tail, saying he had to go home and refresh himself. That would be the last anyone would see of him. At the end of his remarkable diary entry for that day, Pepys describes how he spent the evening in an alehouse on the bank of the Thames, waiting for the wind to change and the burning embers raining down on the river to lessen so he could cross back home. As the daylight faded, he and his friends watched the fire spread as far as they could see into the city. Churches, houses, businesses, taverns, brothels, shops, all but burning in a dreadful, almost blood red haze. The roar of the flames and the cracking of timber almost deafening by the time darkness fell, or should have fallen, for the flames illuminated the city and cast terrible shadows. London had turned into one vast, unearthly arc of fire that stretched over a mile long. Pepys says he began to weep as the mismanaged disaster spread through the hot and melting streets. Panic, fear and rumors that the fire had been started by foreign spies took hold. Trust was disintegrating fast in a city whose face was cracking and burning off. But that's next time on After Dark.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, as ever, thank you for listening. But a big thank you to Pete Zermanczyk, our ex firefighter and current City of London guide, for his contribution today. The City of London Guides have dozens of different guides and walking tours available exploring all sides of the history of the City of London. So if you want to find out more, you can visit their [e-mail] as ever, do get in touch with us to let us know what you thought of this episode, the show in general. Our email address is after darkistoryhit.com and join us again next week for part two of this fascinating history.

[Freddie Wong]

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[Pete Semanczyk]

You can trust podcasts to deliver results for your business. 80% of podcast listeners say they'll consider a brand recommendation by their favorite host. Even more impressive, 88% have taken action because of a podcast ad. If you're looking to connect with highly engaged audiences, now's the time to dive in. Download podcast Pulse 2024 for all the latest insights and see how podcast ads can drive real results.

[Maddy Pelling]

For.