← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Maddy Pelling
Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts, Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.
- [00:04]
Anthony Delaney
But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time.
- [00:08]
Maddy Pelling
If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards.
- [00:18]
Anthony Delaney
So go to the Show Notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm they will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds.
- [00:31]
Maddy Pelling
If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show.
- [00:40]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, this is Penn and Kim Holderness from the Laugh Lines podcast.
- [00:44]
Rebecca Riddiel
If you're like me, buying anything turns into a nightmare research spiral. But listen, if you're trying to upgrade your phone, I'm about to save you from yourself. Because right now you can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence when you switch at your nearest Boost Mobile.
- [01:01]
Anthony Delaney
That is a brand spanking new iPhone 16e for the incredible price of 49.99. Plus you're getting all the latest Apple Intelligence features like Cleanup, which removes distraction from photos with just a tap.
- [01:13]
Rebecca Riddiel
Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [01:23]
Anthony Delaney
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- [02:07]
Jacob Goldstein
That time of year again, back to school season, and Instacart knows that the only thing harder than getting back into the swing of things is getting all the back to school supplies, snacks and essentials you need. So here's your reminder to make your life a little easier this season. Shop favorites from Staples, Best Buy and Costco, all delivered through Instacart so that you can get some time back and do whatever it is that you need to get your life back on track. Instacart. We're here.
- [02:36]
Anthony Delaney
Well, hello there and welcome to After Dark. In today's episode, we'll be talking about one of the most infamous plagues in history, the great plague of London. And so, to begin, let Maddie transport you back to London in the summer of 1665.
- [02:56]
Maddy Pelling
The air is heavy. The city is still, not with peace, but with dread. In his house on Seething Lane, a civil servant named Samuel Pepys stands at his window. He listens. Each toll is a death, each silence between a waiting room for the next. He writes, it was a sad noise to hear all night long. The bell ringing for burials and the poor crying out for help. Outside, carts creak through narrow lanes piled high with the dead. Houses are marked with red crosses. Lord have mercy upon us. Squalled in desperate paint, watchmen guard the doors. The infected are locked inside for 40 days. Assuming they lived that long, of course. From his window, Pepys watches the city unravel. He hears corpses hurled into pits, the streets deserted but for the brave, the foolish and the doomed. Even the king has fled. And still he writes, I did go by boat and saw a man, dead and naked, thrown into the ditch and a woman weeping over her husband. This is not a medieval horror story. This is the beating heart of 17th century London, gripped by its final great plague. This is the story of a city on the edge of collapse and of the people who struggled for survival. This is After Dark. And this is the great plague of London.
- [04:51]
Rebecca Riddiel
Foreign.
- [04:57]
Anthony Delaney
I'm Anthony.
- [04:58]
Maddy Pelling
And I'm Maddie.
- [04:59]
Anthony Delaney
And today I am looking out the window in my office and I'm so much happier than when we've been recording the plague episodes previously because it is slightly raining, it's significantly cooler and the skies are grey, which is perfect for plague talk, I think. Now, we have spent a lot of time talking about plagues this month and looking at what the individual differences were from time to time and from place to. And one of the plagues, I suppose that's most well known is, of course, the Great Plague of London. We're talking 1665 into 1666. Now, to help us discover a little bit more about this and what sets it apart from all the other plagues, we have the historian and author of 1666 Plague, War and Hellfire. So nobody better to talk about this subject than Rebecca Riddiel. Rebecca, welcome to After Dark.
- [05:46]
Jacob Goldstein
Thank you for having me.
- [05:47]
Anthony Delaney
Now, we know that you are also really in love with this time period. With this subject and with the kind of darker side of history. But what I want to get to first, before we get into the topic, is what exactly, for those who might not be so well aware, what exactly is happening in London in 1660s? Give us an idea of the flavour of the time.
- [06:07]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, so it's a really interesting time. So we have a regime change in 1660 when Charles II returns to England to be declared king once more. King of England, Ireland and Scotland. Well, he was already crowned in Scotland in 1651 in actual fact, but that's a side story. London's really exciting because with this regime change we also have a cultural boom in the sense that we have actresses able to perform on the stage in a professional capacity. We have lots of playwrights writing new witty plays, comedy of manners plays, figures like George Etheridge, Aphra Behn, et cetera. It's a different kind of time. It's an exciting time to be in London. It feels hopeful and optimistic and that's right up until 1665.
- [06:57]
Maddy Pelling
The population in London at the time, Rebecca, is relatively large, isn't it? I think it's up to 400,000 people and it is growing. Right, so what are the conditions like for the majority of people living there?
- [07:06]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, so it is a growing population and it's an interesting place. I tend to call it a metropolis rather than a city because it's got various components going on. We have the city, the old walled city of London, and that's kind of like the mercantile heart of England. And we also have the suburbs that are kind of around this city of London and the city of Westminster as well. So nowadays the Strand probably feels like it's. For people that visit London, the Strand probably feels almost in the centre. It was actually going out towards the west, so it's growing. Conditions vary depending on your social class. We can have really grand houses along the Strand where the nobility are beginning to build up the area with these fashionable buildings, bringing in delftware from the continent to kit out their kitchens and wherever else. But then we can have poorer areas. So places like St. Giles in the Fields, which was quite close to the theatre district actually, where we have lots of migrant communities living there. Samuel Pepys parents in law lived there for a time. So it's very varied and it really does depend on where you live and your standing in life.
- [08:12]
Anthony Delaney
Now we've been talking about plagues and we've been talking about kind of this idea of, for want of a better word, scientific progress. Right. To bring us into an idea of germ theory. Now, we don't have that in the 1660s, but what are the shifting patterns of scientific stirrings? What is the thinking at this time? Are there any huge scientific movements happening in London in the 1660s?
- [08:36]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, well, you'll all be familiar with the Royal Society, I'm sure. This is established in the 1660s. So we have lots of polymaths. You can't move for polymaths in 1660s London. So we have people like Newton later on, Hooke, various figures, and they're really starting to think methodically about research and about looking into things. So the microscope is a big thing, a big deal in the 17th century, but frustratingly, people aren't using it in a medical way. They're using it, as Hooke suggests, to look closer at God's creation. So we're seeing things like this. We're seeing people meeting to look at dissections as well, around the city. Charles II loved a dissection. So we've got all of that going on. People are starting to think about the way the body works a little bit more. So there's developments when it comes to the circulation of blood, for example, example, a little bit later, we're starting to see attempts to have transfusions from animal to human. Obviously, people aren't understanding that that's not going to be a good thing. Interestingly, they actually think that people can take on the attributes of whatever is giving you something. So with transfusions, you could almost be dog, like, if you're having a dog transfusion. Similar concepts are around when it comes to wet nurses and children and things. But I feel like I've digressed. There's loads of stuff going on scientifically, but it might not necessarily be what we want. I'd love to think that, you know, they've got microscopes, they're going to start looking at gems, but no, we don't get that yet.
- [10:00]
Maddy Pelling
You paint, Rebecca, such a rich and vivid picture of this time. And you mentioned at the start of our conversation that there has been a regime change. And I wonder, what's the political mood in England and certainly in London itself at this time? We know that the Second Anglo Dutch War is going on that runs from, I think, 1665-67. There's lots of sort of international politics. What's going on at home and what is the newly restored Charles II doing about it? How secure is his power in this moment?
- [10:30]
Jacob Goldstein
He's very secure. He's very secure. He probably doesn't feel secure, but with hindsight and hindsight is a wonderful thing sometimes. He is very secure in his position from the 1660s onwards. He's remarkably secure throughout his reign. There are moments when people, other historians might argue that, you know, he was in a more precarious situation, but I disagree. I think he was very secure and he was throughout and especially in the 1660s. In terms of what's going on politically domestically, as I described before, it's a really exciting time culturally, but it could be quite a scary time religiously. So if you don't conform to the established church, the Church of England, the Anglican faith, if you are what they would call a non conformist or a Quaker or a Puritan is another word that's used as well, and you refuse to pledge your allegiance or, you know, conform to the Church of England, then you could find yourself on the sharp end of the law. So there's a series of measures that are brought in in the early 1660s. It's called the Clarendon Code, after the Earl of Clarendon. But he's not really behind it. So you find measures whereby people can be separated. So certain non conformists. If you're a non conformist and you're preaching, you can't do it within five miles of another non conformists. There's a huge clampdown on Quakers. Quakers are like the big scary religious group for the authorities at this time. And it's quite scary if you are a Quaker because you can have meetings raided, you can be imprisoned, and then you can be forced into indentured servitud and shipped across the Atlantic to the newly established plantations over there as well. So, yes, it is exciting, as I said, but I'm contradicting myself here. It can be quite scary if you are part of these marginalized groups.
- [12:13]
Anthony Delaney
Look, history is nothing if it's not one contradiction after another. We find ourselves in contradictions all the time. So don't worry about it at all. Rebecca. Now, I want to talk to you about the plague specifically, and I want to get a feeling for how, if this particular plague, which I believe begins in 1665, is this different to other plague starts, or is this something we see all throughout history? And what I'm talking about here is are we talking about rat infested trade ships? That's one of the things that's really been common throughout all of our conversations on plague. And I want to know if this is what's happening in London at this time too.
- [12:53]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, well, I think there's always new scientific theories when it comes to plague. Yes, it more than likely is trade ships, whether they're rats on board, other rodents, or whether the plague's being transported by human fleas or human lice. That's a separate question and in my opinion, an unanswerable question. But with 1665, the so called great Plague, everything points towards it being a consequence of merchant ships.
- [13:17]
Maddy Pelling
Rebecca, you mentioned earlier about the geography of the cityscape that we're dealing with. And we still have the city walls themselves in place, at least in part, I guess, in this moment. And of course you have people living on the outskirts and then the more fashionable housing in the centre. Am I right in thinking that the first recorded death actually happens in St. Giles in the fields, which is outside the city walls, isn't it?
- [13:39]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, it does. It happens in St. Giles in the fields, and then you start to get a trickling of a few more deaths. What's quite interesting is that you have people like Pepys who are kind of gently curious about the arrival of plague outside the city, but it's only when it's inside the city that's when they start to get bothered, because, you know, this is our territory now. This is actually serious now that it might affect people higher up, the social order. But yeah, first One is in St. Giles and it spreads quite quickly and measures are brought in relatively fast as well.
- [14:10]
Anthony Delaney
You know, we haven't been able to help but draw these comparisons between plague and what we experienced during COVID And you're talking about the spread there, Rebecca, and with the spread will come deaths. Now, now we know that they kept a bill of mortality and basically that was a weekly report of deaths and this was published by parish authorities and it just really reminded me of that kind of ticking number that we used to see during COVID on our screens. It almost seems a little bit. I'm not sure that has aged very well, actually, as I talk about it now, it was such a staple thing during that time, but now this kind of ticking number, it's a strange, strange thing. But talk to me about that spread in 1665 into 66, and talk to me about the symptoms that people are, are experiencing as the spread occurs.
- [14:55]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, so I think you intimated this, that there is a novelty aspect to it. So I think people are interested in following the plague and tracking the plague because of a novelty. And it's very easy not to think about the human toll when you're just looking at figures. So I think that's part of it as well. And that's definitely part of what we experience with COVID So symptoms, kind of like flu like symptoms really to start with. And then you start to get high fevers. Then your groin and your armpits would start to swell because it affects the lymphatic glands and sometimes burst. It would be kind of a dark, shadowy colour around these areas. That's why it's named the Black Death, because of these black marks and shadows. And then, yeah, you would go into almost a feverish, kind of a hallucination. We've got stories of people setting fire to their own houses just to kind of suppress the pain and to end things sooner. We have people walking around. I mean, this is quite dark. But that's the name of your. We have one individual. There's a story of a man who walked towards one section of London and he was witnessed bashing his own head into a railing. So just really bizarre and troubling behaviour from people because it's such a devastating and awful disease. I always think that the plague is probably one of the most inhumane ways to die. Most people would have died from plague and then it would spread within households and it would also spread from households to other households through clothing. People didn't really understand how it spread, but they had something that was quite close. They understood disease through the idea of miasma and the four humours. So miasma basically, essentially means that air can transport disease and if air smells bad, then you're probably going to be diseased by going into that space. Hence these iconic plague doctor images that we see. There is no evidence of them being in London in 1665, but they have that beaked element to the mask where. Whereby herbs and incense would be packed into them to kind of avoid these bad airs, the bad miasma. But if you think about it, really, it's not so dissimilar in a way to germs. I mean, you know, you're trying to avoid places that usually if something doesn't smell very nice, there's something wrong. So that's what people are understanding. They're not necessarily understanding that it could spread from person to person in the same way, but it does. It spreads around the city, gets into the city of London itself and causes. Causes devastation for people living there.
- [17:25]
Maddy Pelling
In this world of the 17th century, there is such strict hierarchy and organization in terms of society, in terms of individual households, how space is used in buildings in the city in general is so closely monitored and designed. And I just wonder how the city and how the state in particular responds to what you've laid out there, you know, some pretty extraordinary behaviour. Presumably panic is starting to spread along with the disease. There are people setting fire to their houses, people locking other families in their homes in a bid to avoid catching the disease. It seems to me that the city's almost at breaking point pretty quickly and that those hierarchies and those rules by which society is organised are threatening to break down. So what is done to try and control this?
- [18:16]
Jacob Goldstein
There's a number of measures which won't feel very foreign to us now. The shutting up of houses remaining in quarantine. It's an age old method for tackling disease. We used it very recently. It comes with many challenges which we all know about. The loneliness is one that I think all of us would probably empathize with a little bit more now. And there was one document that I, when I was writing my book, it made me sad already. It was about a man called Thomas Clark who'd been shut up in his house, house with a couple of his children and his wife. And he speaks about how one of his children was shut up within the house as well. So one of the children was suffering from plague. At one point he asks for locks. Somebody delivered locks. So I can only assume that they'd locked the child into a specific room. And he talks about how it was really sad that you can't comfort your own child when they're dying. I got a greater sense of the loneliness. Obviously the sadness is universal of a child dying or somebody you love dying. But the loneliness is something that I think I can appreciate a bit more and I think most of us can. So I think there was that the shutting up of houses. People were tasked with checking the dead as well. So this is where we have women entering the scene. They were tasked with being searchers or nurses to those that were dying or suspected of having plague. So they would enter the houses. They were usually women who'd been searchers for a number of years and they would identify whether a person had plague or not or whether they died from something else. We see a rise in things like spotted fever during 1665 as well. And I can only assume that, yeah, there's probably a natural rise in it, but all also, I'm sure a few of those cases are people asking for their loved ones to be written down as spotted fever deaths rather than plague deaths too. So we have all of that going on. The city is deserted by those that can. So anyone that is able to leave will leave, with a couple of exceptions. So there's an individual called George Monk, who orchestrated essentially the Restoration Charles II's return to London. He remains in the city in 1665 and is applauded for doing so afterwards. We have a doctor called Nathaniel Hodges who remains in the city and writes an account of his time treating and looking after people with plague, seeing them quite regularly. We also have an apothecary called Nathaniel Boghurst that remains in the city as well and writes an account of his time. So they bring these measures in to start with. But I think as people are starting to leave and vacate the city, I imagine, although we cannot know for sure, but I imagine usual social hierarchies kind of fall apart a little.
- [21:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi there, it's Anthony from After Dark. Now I want to tell you about a podcast that I think you'll like. It's called the Most Terrifying Places in America from the Travel Channel. On the most terrifying places in America, you will visit some of the creepiest locations across the United States. Go to a hotel in New England where guests wake up with scratches and head down the back roads in the Midwest where a hitchhiker vanishes mid sentence. Then meet the spirits of a Texas warship where the dead still walk the decks on each episode. Travel with ghost hunters, psychics and historians as they uncover the chilling truth behind America's paranoia. Normal Hotspots It's a podcast that's part cross country road trip, part post tour. If you like spooky dark stories and I'm guessing you do as you're already listening to After Dark, this is another podcast that will be right up your street. Listen to Most Terrifying Places in America Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:02]
Rebecca Riddiel
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- [23:03]
Jacob Goldstein
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- [23:08]
Anthony Delaney
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Jacob Goldstein
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Anthony Delaney
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Jacob Goldstein
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- [23:35]
Anthony Delaney
Hey, prime members, you can listen to this show ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. I'm imagining the soundscape, Rebecca, to the city where we have these bells tolling, the kind of warnings of death, plague, death. And again, I'm just reminded of kind of pots and pans banging in our own time during COVID I think, you know, in 400 years time when people are writing about that, that's going to seem like a very strange soundscape that we decided to show. Now, obviously they're demonstrating different things in the two very different cases, and it shows that you can't always draw parallels between our experiences during COVID and plague. But nonetheless, it brings to life, I think, some of what's being experienced on the streets in London at the time. Now you're talking there, Rebecca, about people leaving. And I'm just wondering again, when we were experiencing our lockdowns, there was a lot of resentment over people who decided to take it upon themselves to leave those areas that they were supposed to stay in. Did this build up some kind of class resentment in the 17th century? Was this something people were like, well, hold on, you're able to do this? We have to stay here, therefore potentially die? Or is just this something they expected? Look, you're elite, of course you're going to go, and off you go?
- [25:01]
Jacob Goldstein
Well, obviously, you all both know, as historians, it's really tricky to access the words and writings of people who are right at the bottom of the social order. The only way we usually get that is through criminal records. So it's very hard to know what somebody that may have been later termed working class would have thought about this situation. The class system as we know it today was still developing in the 17th century. We don't have that same hierarchy. We have a kind of middling sort and those lower down and those higher up. So I assume there must have been. I mean, how could there not have been? But I think there's also something that we need to consider as well. When we think about 17th century plague, it's so tempting to think that it's kind of like, for, like with COVID in terms of the way that we experienced it. But I just think there's fear. I mentioned before about this idea about smell. So if you're seeing more cases of plague in ramshackle areas where poorer people are living, then it's going to start to breed resentment and stigma among those that aren't in those areas. So we see that fear growing. And I think it's interesting. We've lived through two pandemics in our lifetime. We're still living through one of them, Covid and the AIDS pandemic. And we don't often make those parallels with AIDS when it comes to the plague, but we always do with COVID But I think that fear and that stigma is something that we need to think about with plague, because I think it was there as well.
- [26:23]
Maddy Pelling
That's a really interesting comparison and one that we haven't necessarily brought to this conversation before. So thank you for that. Yeah, I'm going to sit and think about that for a little while. I think after our conversation, Rebecca, you talked about how inevitably it's hard to access the words, the thoughts, the feelings of the lower classes in this era and indeed many other eras in terms of the historical record. And I think one of the ways that we can perhaps capture something of the mood in London or the perceived mood is through true visual culture of the time. And Anthony, in true After Dark tradition, I have an image for you to describe, and I think it's one that we may have encountered before, actually on this podcast. But I want you to tell us about it because I think it gives a sense of, I suppose, the apocalyptic fear that is taking hold. And we know that one of the people who has left the city, of course, is the King himself. And I just wonder if there's a sense that of the world ending, that hierarchy dissolving as the king leaves and London is sort of left behind to fend for itself. So tell us what you're looking at in this image, please.
- [27:27]
Anthony Delaney
It's a great image. Do you know what I was thinking before you asked me about it, Maddie? I was like, I had never seen this before. And then you said, I think we've seen this before. I was like, we probably have, and I've just totally forgotten about it. That would be quite difficult. But I'll treat it like I've never seen it before because I feel like I've never seen it before. It is an image with a skeletal form at the very center of it. And he is standing on cottage coffins. He is representing Death. We have arrows, broken arrows in both his bony hands. Behind him, we see the city of London. And the words above the city say, lord have mercy on London. It is overshadowed by a gray cloud, and it seems to be quite badly rendered. Lightning, question mark coming out of it, striking London below, then around Death, who is standing on these black coffins, these very 17th century renderings of coffins. We have workers in the field, and I think this is characterized by the haystacks that they are. Well, it seems like they're lying in, but actually, when I look at the words above it, it says, we die. So it's obviously saying that these people are dying of plague. And then Death is saying, I follow. So where they die, he's following them around. And then the other villagers are saying, we fly. And Death is following them. Of course, that's who he's following. He's following the villagers that are living on the outskirts of the city who are trying to get in somewhere else to be not so close to the plague. But at the very. As those people try to leave, we have people with pikes, and they are trying to keep them in and saying, keep out. And they do not want these people coming to their areas. You know, as you're saying, Maddie and Rebecca, it's very difficult to get these words, but here's a rendering of that kind of tension that the movement of people is having at this time. It's fascinating, isn't it? Mari, any thoughts on this that I have in common? Covered.
- [29:17]
Maddy Pelling
I love all the 17th century spelling on this image.
- [29:20]
Anthony Delaney
I know. Yeah. It's amazing.
- [29:22]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. I mean, there's a really moving pair in the bottom left corner. It's a mother and child who are lent against a haystack. And the mother has sort of opened her clothing up and revealed her chest. And you can see the bubos actually on her. It's really kind of tragic imagery. They're just sort of left lying there dead in the field. Rebecca, how does the plague eventually stop? Because obviously we're not still suffering from it in Britain, thank goodness. So what is it that kills it? Because I know there's a lot of mythology around this. There's this idea, you know, of a certain event that happens in 1666 that eradicates this from the city. But tell us what the actual facts are on the ground.
- [30:04]
Jacob Goldstein
The thing is, I can't, because we don't know. And I think if anyone tells you they do know, unless they're a scientist and it's some kind of breakthrough, they are. Are winging it. We don't know. We don't know why it ended in Britain at that time. It just seemed to fade out. It was gradually fading out across Europe as well. So there's three plague pandemics. There's the first one, the Justinian Plague. There's the second one, which is our plague pandemic, and 1665 is towards the end of that. And then there's the third plague pandemic which happened in more recent times. We don't know why it ended. We don't know why it didn't come back the next year or the year after that. Because plague was endemic in Britain. It was endemic across Europe and most of the world at this point in time. It was something that was expected, it was not pleasant, it wasn't liked. People didn't like living through an outbreak or an epidemic, but it wasn't something that was foreign and unknown. So we don't know why it didn't return.
- [30:56]
Anthony Delaney
We have learned on After Dark previously, Rebecca, that there's probably very little evidence for the idea that the Great Fire of London, which, you know, if you were to ask a lot of people just on the street, they would probably think it was ended by the Great Fire of London in 1666. And we have an old episode on that. So go back and find that and listen through. We talked there about how that doesn't really add up. The fire doesn't really destroy the areas that are most affected by plague. So we're talking about Whitechapel or Southwark. So so much easier, isn't it, Rebecca, to say what's not the cause of the plague ending rather than what is? However, we do know that by February 1666, Charles II feels that it is safe now to return to London. So there is a sense of normality returning. Rebecca, talk to me then about once he returns, once Charles returns, and there's the sense that it's fad. What are the kind of immediate legacies of this particular plague?
- [31:48]
Jacob Goldstein
Confusion. So people, we're in the 17th century, people are still extremely religious. Your mortal life is just one part of an immortal journey. So anything that you do on Earth, anything that's happening to you on Earth, anything like a big plague or a big fire, there has to be a reason for that. It has to be God somehow. And if there is a reason for it and you've experienced a plague and a dreadful war and also A fire as well. Why is that happening? So people start to search their own souls and start to think about what is it that we've done that could warrant this? Was it because we killed Charles I a couple of decades ago? Is it the licentious way that the court's living? Is it the fact that Charles II is married but flaunting his mistresses? Is it something that I have done personally? We see a lot of this and we see a lot of religious tracts emerging. And one of my favorite ones actually is by a guy called Thomas Vincent. He's a non conformist preacher and he writes this tract. He's basically chastising everybody when they return for going back to their old ways, for living as they'd lived before. And that tells us a lot, actually. It tells us that people did return to normality quite quickly. But it also says that obviously there were certain people that thought that this was the wrong thing to do. I do think what we don't see and reading between the lines is a kind of trauma from this. And I don't think we're enough out of the events of 2020, 20, 21, 2022 to recognise the collective trauma that we've all been through. Consequence. But I think there's a lot of that going on also. But the theatres started again, actresses were on stage once more. The country kind of moved on.
- [33:25]
Maddy Pelling
It's interesting, Rebecca, that you say to a certain extent people return to the life that they had before. But I wonder how much of a turning point this is. I'm thinking about, you know, as an 18th centuryist, this is the moment when the city of London that I would recognize in the time period that I spend a lot of time in, starts to emerge. We have have Sir Christopher Wren commissioned to repair St. Paul's Cathedral, very famously after the great fire. And the medieval winding streets, the close wooden buildings, they don't totally disappear, of course, but the ones that have been destroyed by fire are rebuilt in brick as well as in wood and in stone. And there's a sense of a new world emerging. And I wonder if, as a historian of the 17th century, you see, see these short years of plague and fire as I suppose, a turning point and the emergence of a new modern world.
- [34:17]
Jacob Goldstein
I think the fire is. How do I phrase this? I agree with what you're saying, but I think that's more down to the fire and the re landscaping of London than the plague. I think that would have happened with or without the plague. And if the fire hadn't happened, we probably would have seen that change at a slower pace over the course of the 18th century. Century, anyway. It's a really difficult question because there are so many different answers to it. We're seeing changes that are going on anyway. People like to draw divides between different periods. But I think we see, you know, the emergence of coffee houses, for example, and the culture of coffee houses, the development of political parties. Well, you could probably trace those roots back to the Civil War, if not earlier. Were they escalated as a consequence of the fire? Well, there seemed to be more coffee houses after the Great Fire, but is that just because there was more real estate? Who knows? I think, yeah, we are seeing changes. We do definitely see a change in the way people are living. We've also got some really exciting new ish research, I think, from the University of Cambridge, which we all know if we're studying the 17th century or the early modern period. But it's nice to see it in facts and figures that actually the Industrial Revolution was well underway in the 17th century. It's not just an 18th century thing to think about. So we've got those changes going on also. But it's kind of like, how long's a piece of string? Where do you want to make that division? And what are you looking at at that particular point? What are you measuring?
- [35:42]
Anthony Delaney
We've heard an awful lot about different plagues, and often I definitely, last week when I was recording, I definitely had a moment of going, wait, we've spoken about this already, because there's so much in common between a lot of the plagues. You know, you hear about the buboes, you hear about the trade, you hear about all those things that are forming different experiences, but they are nonetheless interconnected. As a parting thought, I'd love to hear what you think sets this particular plague apart. Why is this or is it different?
- [36:14]
Jacob Goldstein
I think we have a lot of documentation for this plague, so I think that's really interesting. We get a real sense of how people experienced it through writers like Johnny Evelyn and Samuel Pepys. What I would like people to recognize and remember as well is that that the bills of mortality are so important to anyone studying early modern disease. But those bills of mortality are built on the work of women whose names sometimes we won't know. We might know them if we look into parish records or dig into them a little bit more, but just regular women who've had this dreadful task of going into people's homes to find out what they've died from and then reporting it back to the parish and then it's put into these little bundles, bundles of bills of mortality. So that kind of real heavy lifting, that painful and awful job that most of us wouldn't want. I'd quite like people to remember that. I think about the great plague of 1665 and earlier ones. Doesn't quite answer your question, but I guess that's my parting thought when it comes to plague.
- [37:12]
Maddy Pelling
Well, there you have it, listeners. That's a great note to end on. Thank you to our guest today, Rebecca Riddiel, and thank you for listening along wherever you are. If you want to get in touch with us with a episode, suggestions or feedback, you can do so@after darkhistoryhit.com See you next time.
- [37:34]
Anthony Delaney
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- [38:07]
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Maddy Pelling
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Jacob Goldstein
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Maddy Pelling
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