Великий лондонский пожар

Великий лондонский пожар, изображенный неизвестным художником (1675 г.), как будто он появился с лодки в районе Тауэр-Уорф вечером во вторник, 4 сентября 1666 г. Слева - Лондонский мост ; справа - Лондонский Тауэр . Вдали находится Старый собор Святого Павла , окруженный самым высоким пламенем.

Великий пожар в Лондоне был крупный пожар , который охватил через центральные части Лондона с воскресенья, 2 сентября в четверг, 6 сентября 1666 ^[1] Огнь потрошеного средневековый города Лондон в старой римской городской стене . Он угрожал , но не достиг города Вестминстер (ныне West End ), Чарльз II «s Дворец Уайтхолл , и большинство из пригородных трущоб . ^[2] Было разрушено 13 200 домов, 87 приходских церквей, собор Святого Павла., и большинство зданий городских властей. По оценкам, были разрушены дома 70 000 из 80 000 жителей города. ^[3]

Пожар начался в пекарне вскоре после полуночи в воскресенье, 2 сентября, и быстро распространился. Использование основной техники пожаротушения того времени, создание противопожарных заграждений посредством сноса, было критически отложено из-за нерешительности лорд-мэра сэра Томаса Бладворта . К тому времени, когда в воскресенье вечером был отдан приказ о крупномасштабном сносе, ветер уже превратил пожар в пекарне в огненную бурю.который победил такие меры. В понедельник пожар распространился на север, в самое сердце города. Порядок на улицах был нарушен, поскольку появились слухи о поджогах подозрительных иностранцев. Страхи бездомных сосредоточились на французах и голландцах, врагах Англии в продолжающейся Второй англо-голландской войне ; эти значительные группы иммигрантов стали жертвами линчевания и уличного насилия. Во вторник пожар распространился почти по всему городу, разрушив собор Святого Павла и перепрыгнув речной флот, чтобы угрожать двору Карла II в Уайтхолле.. Одновременно шли скоординированные усилия по тушению пожаров. Считается, что битва за тушение пожара была выиграна благодаря двум ключевым факторам: упал сильный восточный ветер, и гарнизон лондонского Тауэра использовал порох для создания эффективных огневых барьеров, остановив дальнейшее распространение на восток.

Число погибших неизвестно, но обычно считается относительно небольшим; было зарегистрировано только шесть подтвержденных смертей. Некоторые историки оспаривают это убеждение, утверждая, что смерти более бедных граждан не регистрировались и что жар огня мог кремировать множество жертв, не оставив никаких узнаваемых останков. ^[4] Расплавленная керамика, выставленная в Лондонском музее, найденная археологами на Пудинг-лейн , где начался пожар, показывает, что температура достигла 1250 ° C (2280 ° F; 1520 K). ^[5]Социальные и экономические проблемы, вызванные катастрофой, были огромными. Бегство из Лондона и поселение в других местах было настоятельно рекомендовано Карлом II, опасавшимся восстания в Лондоне среди обездоленных беженцев. Предлагались различные схемы восстановления Города, некоторые из них очень радикальные. После пожара Лондон был реконструирован по тому же средневековому плану улиц, который существует до сих пор. ^[6]

Лондон в 1660-х [ править ]

К 1660-м годам Лондон был самым крупным городом в Великобритании с населением в полмиллиона жителей. ^[7] Джон Эвелин , противопоставляя Лондон великолепию Парижа в стиле барокко в 1659 году, назвал его «деревянным, северным и искусственным скоплением домов» и выразил тревогу по поводу опасности возгорания, создаваемой деревом и скоплением. ^[8] Под «искусственным» Эвелин имела в виду незапланированный и импровизированный результат органического роста и нерегулируемого разрастания городов . ^[9] Лондон был римским поселением в течение четырех столетий и постепенно становился все более многолюдным внутри своей оборонительной городской стены. Он также вытолкнул наружу за стену в убогие заочные трущобы, такие какШордич , Холборн и Саутварк , и зашли достаточно далеко, чтобы включить независимый город Вестминстер . ^[9]

К концу 17 века собственно Сити - территория, ограниченная городской стеной и рекой Темзой, - была лишь частью Лондона, занимая около 700 акров (2,8 км ² ; 1,1 кв. Мили) ^[10], где проживало около 80 000 человек, или шестая часть жителей Лондона. Город был окружен кольцом внутренних пригородов, где проживало большинство лондонцев. Город был тогда, как и сейчас, торговым центром столицы, крупнейшим рынком и самым загруженным портом в Англии, в котором преобладали торговые и производственные классы. ^[11] Аристократия избегала Сити и жила либо в сельской местности за пределами трущоб, либо в эксклюзивном районе Вестминстер (современный Вест-Энд).), место двора короля Карла II в Уайтхолле. Состоятельные люди предпочитали жить на удобном расстоянии от забитого автотранспортом, загрязненного, нездорового Города, особенно после того, как он был поражен разрушительной вспышкой бубонной чумы в 1665 году чумы ^[12].

Отношения между городом и короной часто были напряженными. Лондонский Сити был оплотом республиканизма во время гражданской войны в Англии (1642–1651), а богатая и экономически динамичная столица все еще могла представлять угрозу для Карла II, что было продемонстрировано несколькими республиканскими восстаниями в Лондоне. в начале 1660-х гг. Городские магистраты принадлежали к поколению, сражавшемуся в Гражданской войне , и могли помнить, как стремление Карла I к абсолютной власти привело к национальной травме. ^[13]Они были полны решимости воспрепятствовать любым подобным тенденциям в его сыне, и когда Великий пожар угрожал городу, они отказались от предложений Чарльза о солдатах и ​​других ресурсах. Даже в такой чрезвычайной ситуации идея о том, чтобы непопулярные королевские войска приказали войти в Город, была политическим динамитом. К тому времени, как Чарльз принял командование от безуспешного лорд-мэра, пожар уже вышел из-под контроля. ^{[14] [12]}

Пожарная опасность в городе [ править ]

Город был по сути средневековым по своему плану улиц, переполненным лабиринтом узких извилистых мощеных улочек. До 1666 года здесь было несколько крупных пожаров, последний из которых произошел в 1632 году. Строительство из дерева и кровля из соломы были запрещены на протяжении веков, но эти дешевые материалы продолжали использоваться. ^[16] Единственным крупным каменным районом был богатый центр города, где особняки торговцев и маклеров стояли на просторных участках, окруженных внутренним кольцом переполненных более бедных приходов, каждый дюйм строительной площади которых использовался для размещения быстро растущее население. В этих приходах были рабочие места, многие из которых были пожароопасными: литейные , кузницы , стекольщики.- что было технически незаконным в городе, но допускалось на практике.

Человеческие жилища были переполнены, а их конструкция увеличивала опасность пожара. Типичные шести- или семиэтажные бревенчатые лондонские многоквартирные дома имели « пристани » (выступающие верхние этажи). У них был узкий след на уровне земли, но они максимально использовали землю, «вторгаясь» на улицу, как выразился современный наблюдатель, с постепенно увеличивающимся размером верхних этажей. Опасность пожара была хорошо заметна, когда верхние пристани почти пересекались в узких переулках - «поскольку они способствуют возникновению пожара, они также препятствуют лечению», - писал один наблюдатель. ^[17]В 1661 году Карл II издал прокламацию, запрещающую навешивание окон и пристаней, но местное правительство в значительной степени проигнорировало это. Следующее, более резкое послание Чарльза в 1665 г. предупреждало об опасности пожара из-за узости улиц и санкционировало как заключение непокорных строителей, так и снос опасных зданий. Это тоже мало повлияло.

Набережная сыграла важную роль в развитии Великого пожара. Темза давала воду для тушения пожаров и спасения на лодке, но в более бедных районах вдоль набережной имелись запасы и подвалы горючего, что увеличивало опасность пожара. Вдоль причалов, шаткие деревянные многоквартирные дома и лачуги бедняков из гудроновой бумаги были зажаты среди «старых бумажных построек и самого горючего материала из смолы, смолы, конопли, розены и льна, которые были сложены поблизости». ^[18] Лондон был также полон черного пороха , особенно вдоль набережной. Многое осталось в домах частных лиц со времен гражданской войны в Англии. В лондонском Тауэре хранилось от пяти до шестисот тонн пороха .^[19] На судно чандлеры вдоль причалов также проведены большие запасы,хранятся в деревянных бочках.

Лондонский мост был единственной физической связью между Сити и южным берегом Темзы и сам был застроен домами. Он был отмечен как смертельная ловушка во время пожара 1632 года, и к рассвету в воскресенье эти дома горели. Сэмюэл Пепис наблюдал за пожаром из лондонского Тауэра и выразил глубокую обеспокоенность по поводу друзей, живущих на мосту. ^[20] Были опасения , что пламя будет пересекать London Bridge угрожать местечко в Саутворке на южном берегу, но эта опасность была предотвращена открытым пространством между зданиями на мосте , который выступал в качестве просека. ^[21]

Римская стена высотой 18 футов (5,5 м), окружающая город, подвергала бегущих бездомных риску оказаться заточенной в аду. После того, как набережная загорелась, а путь эвакуации был отрезан лодкой, единственными выходами были восемь ворот в стене. В течение первых двух дней мало кто вообще думал о том, чтобы сбежать из горящего Города. Они выносили все, что могли унести из своих вещей, в ближайший «безопасный дом», во многих случаях приходскую церковь или территорию Собора Святого Павла, только для того, чтобы снова переехать через несколько часов. Некоторые перемещали свои вещи и себя «четыре и пять раз» за один день. ^[22] Ощущение необходимости выбраться за стены укоренилось только поздно в понедельник, а затем у узких ворот были почти панические сцены, когда обезумевшие беженцы пытались выбраться со своими узлами, телегами, лошадьми и повозками.

Решающим фактором, препятствовавшим тушению пожаров, была узость улиц. Даже при нормальных условиях, смесь тележек, вагонов и пешеходов в низкорослых переулках была подвержена частыми пробками и затор . Во время пожара проходы были дополнительно заблокированы беженцами, разбившимися в них среди своих спасенных вещей или убегающими наружу, подальше от центра разрушения, поскольку команды подрывников и бригады пожарных машин тщетно пытались приблизиться к нему.

Пожаротушение 17 века [ править ]

Пожары были обычным явлением в многолюдном деревянном городе с его открытыми каминами, свечами, духовками и запасами горючего. Не было ни полиции, ни пожарной бригады, которую можно было бы вызвать, но местная лондонская милиция , известная как « Обученные банды» , была доступна для чрезвычайных ситуаций общего характера, по крайней мере в принципе, а наблюдение за пожаром было одной из задач вахты , тысячи сторожей или " посыльные », патрулировавшие улицы в ночное время. ^[23] Существовали самостоятельные общественные процедуры для борьбы с пожарами, и они обычно были эффективными. Публично настроенные граждане будут предупреждены об опасном пожаре в доме приглушенным перезвоном церковных колоколов и поспешно собираются вместе, чтобы тушить пожар. ^[24]

Доступные для этого методы основывались на сносе и воде. По закону на башне каждой приходской церкви должно было быть оборудование для этих усилий: длинные лестницы, кожаные ведра, топоры и «пожарные крючки» для сноса зданий (рисунок справа; см. Также древко для пик ). ^[a] Иногда более высокие здания выравнивались быстро и эффективно с помощью контролируемых пороховых взрывов. Этот радикальный метод создания противопожарных заграждений все чаще использовался к концу Великого пожара, и современные историки считают, что именно он победил в битве. ^[26]Снос домов с подветренной стороны от опасного пожара часто был эффективным способом сдерживания разрушения с помощью пожарных крюков или взрывчатых веществ. Однако на этот раз снос был отложен на несколько часов из-за отсутствия руководства и неспособности лорда-мэра отдать необходимые распоряжения. ^[27]

Использование воды для тушения пожара также не удалось. В принципе, вода поступала из системы вязовых труб, по которым снабжалось 30 000 домов через высокую водонапорную башню в Корнхилле , наполняемую из реки во время прилива, а также через резервуар родниковой воды Хартфордшира в Ислингтоне . ^{[28] [29]} It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to a hose to spray on a fire or fill buckets. Further, the site where the fire started was close to the river: theoretically, all the lanes from the river up to the bakery and adjoining buildings should have been manned with double rows of firefighters passing buckets of water up to the fire and then back down to the river to be refilled.^[30] This did not happen, or at least was no longer happening by the time that Pepys viewed the fire from the river at mid-morning on the Sunday. Pepys comments in his diary that nobody was trying to put it out, but instead they fled from it in fear, hurrying "to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire." The flames crept towards the riverfront and soon torched the flammable warehouses along the wharves and set alight the water wheels under London Bridge, eliminating the supply of piped water.^[31]

London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines, which had been used in earlier large-scale fires. However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels; others were mounted on wheelless sleds.^[32] They had to be brought a long way, tended to arrive too late, and had limited reach, with spouts but no delivery hoses.^[b] On this occasion, an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets. Firefighters worked desperately to manoeuvre the engines to the river to fill their tanks, and several of the engines fell into the Thames. The heat from the flames by then was too great for the remaining engines to get within a useful distance.^[31]

Development of the fire[edit]

Sunday[edit]

A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane^[c] a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, who became the first victim.^[36] The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission.^[37]

When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on the grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than by possessing requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "A woman could piss it out", and left.^[38] After the City had been destroyed, Samuel Pepys looked back on the events and wrote in his diary on 7 September 1666: "People do all the world over cry out of the simplicity [the stupidity] of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him."

Pepys ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from a turret. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall, "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way." Charles' brother James, Duke of York, offered the use of the Royal Life Guards to help fight the fire.^[39]

The fire spread quickly in the high wind and, by mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing it and fled. The moving human mass and their bundles and carts made the lanes impassable for firemen and carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but reached only St Paul's Cathedral before he had to get out and walk. Pedestrians with handcarts and goods were still on the move away from the fire, heavily weighed down. They filled parish churches not directly threatened with furniture and valuables.^[40]

Pepys found Bloodworth trying to coordinate the fire-fighting efforts and near to collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling down houses: "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." Holding on to his civic dignity, he refused James's offer of soldiers and then went home to bed.^[40] King Charles II sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge to inspect the scene. He found that houses were still not being pulled down, in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone.^[41][42]

By Sunday afternoon, 18 hours after the alarm was raised in Pudding Lane, the fire had become a raging firestorm that created its own weather. A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by the chimney effect wherever constrictions narrowed the air current, such as the constricted space between jettied buildings, and this left a vacuum at ground level. The resulting strong inward winds fueled the flames.^[43] The fire pushed towards the City's centre "in a broad, bow-shaped arc".^[44]

Monday[edit]

The fire was principally expanding north and west by dawn on Monday, 3 September, the turbulence of the firestorm pushing the flames both farther south and farther north than the day before.^[45] The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. Southwark was preserved by a pre-existent firebreak on the bridge, a long gap between the buildings which had saved the south side of the Thames in the fire of 1632 and now did so again.^[21]

The fire's spread to the north reached the financial heart of the City. The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to rescue their stacks of gold coins before they melted. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping centre – and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a smoking shell within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:

The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them.^[46]

Evelyn lived in Deptford, four miles (6 km) outside the City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed".^[47] In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!"^[47]

Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. Foreigners were immediately suspected because of the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War. Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches.^[48] There was a wave of street violence.^[49] There were also religious alarms of renewed Gunpowder Plots. The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post passed for the entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners, Catholics, and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both.

The inhabitants, especially the upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), and it was especially profitable for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings on the Saturday before the fire; on Monday, it rose to as much as £40, a fortune equivalent to more than £4,000 in 2005.^[50] Seemingly every cart and boat owner within reach of London made their way towards the City to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire."^[51]

Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked. Bloodworth was responsible as Lord Mayor for co-ordinating the firefighting, but he had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporaneous accounts of the Monday's events.^[52] In this state of emergency, the King put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James set up command posts round the perimeter of the fire, press-ganging any men of the lower classes found in the streets into teams of firemen. Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, rescuing foreigners from the mob and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September.^[53]

On Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle, Blackfriars would stay the course of the flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London. This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night.^[54]

Tuesday[edit]

Tuesday, 4 September was the day of greatest destruction.^[55] The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar, where Strand meets Fleet Street, was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall. He hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak, making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it.

Working to a plan at last, James's firefighters had also created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration. It contained the fire until late afternoon, when the flames leapt across and began to destroy the wide affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside.

Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral a safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row. However, the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren. The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour, the lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt were burning. The cathedral was quickly a ruin.

During the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the prevailing east wind and towards Pepys's home on Seething Lane and the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire.

Wednesday[edit]

The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September.^[56] Pepys climbed the steeple of Barking Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw." There were many separate fires still burning themselves out, but the Great Fire was over. The following Sunday, rain fell over the city, extinguishing the fire. However, it took some time until the last traces were put out: coal was still burning in cellars two months later.^[57]

Pepys visited Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, and saw a great encampment of homeless refugees, "poor wretches carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves". He noted that the price of bread had doubled in the environs of the park. Evelyn also went out to Moorfields, which was turning into the main point of assembly for the homeless, and was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty."^[58]

Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims. There was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields, and Islington: a light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, and were marching towards Moorfields to murder and pillage. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and markets set up round the perimeter.

Deaths and destruction[edit]

Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight^[59] and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the impromptu camps.^[60]

Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed, including, for instance, dramatist James Shirley and his wife. Hanson also maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments. The fire was fed not merely by wood, fabrics, and thatch, Hanson points out, but also by the oil, pitch, tar, coal, tallow, fats, sugar, alcohol, turpentine, and gunpowder stored in the riverside district. It melted the imported steel lying along the wharves and the great iron chains and locks on the City gates. Hanson appeals to common sense and "the experience of every other major urban fire down the centuries", emphasising that the speed of the fire through the tenements surely trapped "the old, the very young, the halt and the lame", producing a death toll not of four or eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand."^[61]

The material destruction has been computed at 13,500 houses, 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office, and the three western city gates—Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate.^[62] The monetary value of the loss, first estimated at £100,000,000 in the currency of the time, was later reduced to an uncertain £10,000,000^[63] (equivalent to £1.7 billion in 2019). Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in the fields towards Islington and Highgate.^[63]

Aftermath[edit]

An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was an agent of the Pope and had started the Great Fire in Westminster.^[64] He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 28 September 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board a ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started.^[65]

Allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by opponents of pro-Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis later in his reign.^[66] Abroad in the Netherlands, the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire, the burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.^[67]

On 5 October, Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, reported to the Doge of Venice and the Senate, that Louis XIV announced that he would not "have any rejoicings about it, being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people". Louis had made an offer to his aunt, the British Queen Henrietta Maria, to send food and whatever goods might be of aid in alleviating the plight of Londoners, yet he made no secret that he regarded "the fire of London as a stroke of good fortune for him " as it reduced the risk of French ships crossing the Channel and the North Sea being taken or sunk by the English fleet.^[68] Louis tried to take advantage but an attempt by a Franco-Dutch fleet to combine with a larger Dutch fleet ended in failure on 17 September when they encountered a larger English fleet led by Thomas Allin off Dungeness.^[69]

Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades."^[70] A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to September 1672 to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal wrangles would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover.

Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence (see Evelyn's plan pictured). Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight, and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose. Instead, much of the old street plan was recreated in the new City, with improvements in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood. New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St Paul's Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's 50 new churches.

Scottish economist Nicholas Barbon illegally reshaped London with his own rebuilding schemes, which developed The Strand, St. Giles, Bloomsbury and Holborn. These were completed despite strict restrictions which stated it was illegal to build between the City of London and Westminster.^[71]

On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London was erected near Pudding Lane, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, standing 61 metres (200 ft) tall. In 1668, accusations against the Catholics were added to the inscription on the Monument which read, in part, "Popish frenzy which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched". The inscription remained until after the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 when it was removed in 1830 following a successful campaign by City Solicitor Charles Pearson.^[72][73] Another monument marks the spot where the fire stopped: the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield.^[74]

The Great Plague epidemic of 1665 is believed to have killed a sixth of London's inhabitants, or 80,000 people,^[75] and it is sometimes suggested that the fire saved lives in the long run by burning down so much unsanitary housing with their rats and their fleas which transmitted the plague, as plague epidemics did not recur in London after the fire.^[76] Historians disagree as to whether the fire played a part in preventing subsequent major outbreaks. The Museum of London website claims that there was a connection,^[77] while historian Roy Porter points out that the fire left the slum suburbs untouched.^[d]

See also[edit]

• List of buildings that survived the Great Fire of London
• 1666 in England
• Great Fire of London in popular culture

Notes[edit]

Citations[edit]

References[edit]

• Bell, Walter George (1929). The Story of London's Great Fire. John Lane.
• Evelyn, John (1854). Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S. Hurst and Blackett. Retrieved 5 November 2006.
• Hanson, Neil (2001). The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London. Doubleday.
• Hanson, Neil (2002). The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year, 1666. John Wiley and Sons. A "substantially different" version of Hanson's The Dreadful Judgement (front matter).
• Jones, J.R (2013). The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century Modern Wars In Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-1317899488.
• Martin, Andrew (2013). Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1846684784.
• Morgan, Kenneth O. (2000). Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford.
• Pepys, Samuel (1995). Robert Latham; William Matthews (eds.). The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol. 7. Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-499027-7. First published between 1970 and 1983, by Bell & Hyman, London. Quotations from and details involving Pepys are taken from this standard, and copyright, edition. All web versions of the diaries are based on public domain 19th century editions and unfortunately contain many errors, as the shorthand in which Pepys' diaries were originally written was not accurately transcribed until the pioneering work of Latham and Matthews.
• Porter, Roy (1994). London: A Social History. Harvard.
• Reddaway, T. F. (1940). The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Jonathan Cape.
• Sheppard, Francis (1998). London: A History. Oxford.
• Tinniswood, Adrian (2003). By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London. Jonathan Cape.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Great Fire of London.

• Great Fire of London on In Our Time at the BBC
• Channel 4 animation of the spread of the fire
• Fire of London website produced by the Museum of London, The National Archives, the National Portrait Gallery, London Fire Brigade Museum and London Metropolitan Archives for Key Stage 1 pupils (ages 5–7) and teachers
• Records on the Great Fire of London 1666 from the UK Parliamentary Collections

Coordinates: 51°31′N 0°05′W / 51.51°N 0.09°W / 51.51; -0.09