Great Plague [Paperback]

Stephen Porter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2003

The bubonic plague epidemic which struck England in 1665-6 was responsible for the deaths of 20 per cent of London's population. Its sheer scale was overwhelming and it was well-recorded, featuring in the works of Pepys and Defoe and described in terrible detail in the contemporary Bills of Mortality. This book paints a portrait of a society threatened by a killer disease which it was powerless to control. Often remembered because of its devastating impact on London, the plague struck other urban communities as well, carrying off half the population of Colchester and causing high mortality in cities such as Norwich and Cambridge. Nor were country villages spared, with Eyam in Derbyshire - where the inhabitants sealed themselves off to prevent the spread of the disease and a third of the inhabitants died - being the most famous. This work describes the disease and how people at the time thought it was caused. It gives details of the treatments available (such as they were) and evokes its impact on the country. We will probably never know the reasons for the disappearance of the bubonic plague from England after 1665. What is clear is the fascination the subject still holds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of a history of the Great Fire of London here offers a scholarly, meticulous yet accessible analysis of the last epidemic of bubonic plague to afflict England. The scourge of 1665 killed more than 70,000 in London alone. So horrific were the symptoms, which included psychological and neurological meltdown as well as the telltale glandular swellings and dark skin blotches, that, as Porter relates, it was considered fortunate to die of another disease. Some deliberately contracted syphilis in the hope that it would confer immunity against the plague, and many more misplaced their faith in the new wonder-drug, tobacco. Porter surveys the emerging national policies designed to curb the disease, but isolating the sick, quarantining shipping and prohibiting fairs proved tragically inadequate. The epidemic left the nation exhausted and demoralized, unable to tackle the Dutch ships that strutted around the mouth of the River Thames and strangled the capital of supplies. Using the abundant statistical data provided by parish registers, as well as the sexier narratives of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys and their ilk, the author demonstrates the frightening unpredictability of the plague and the cruel inequality of its impact on rich and poor. His numerical analyses may prove excessive for some lay readers, and the book tends to presuppose a familiarity with English place names (a map or two would have helped), but the 60 black-and-white illustrations, from the mass graves of the Plague Year to the later festivities on the frozen Thames, should help attract a broad readership. History Book Club selection. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A well-documented and well-illustrated account of the bubonic-plague epidemic that struck England in 166566, killing some 20 percent of Londons inhabitants. Before examining the Great Plague, disaster specialist Porter (The Great Fire of London, not reviewed, etc.) describes the impact of earlier epidemics that had repeatedly swept across Europe in the previous three centuries, affecting not just social and economic life but beliefs, literature, and art. In London, weekly Bills of Mortality reporting the number and cause of deaths had been issued since the early 1600s to provide warning of an impending outbreak and encourage measures to check its progress: quarantining incoming ships, isolating the sick, lighting fires in the streets, fumigating houses, and killing stray cats and dogs. Many of those with the means to do so fled to the countryside; the poor, however, stayed in the city, and it was they who suffered the most. Porter shows how individuals and families endured illness, enforced isolation, and loss of employment; how London and some provincial towns suffered a ruinous loss of trade; and how the government was severely hampered in its war efforts against the Dutch by the ensuing economic recession and reduced revenues. He also depicts how rapidly London recovered, with the population returning to its former size within two years after the epidemic. While Porter's text does not emphasize individual human-interest stories, some of the 70 illustrations he has includedgrim pest-houses where the sick were confined, and dead bodies lying on the street, being loaded onto a cart, or dumped into a mass gravegive a vivid sense of the personal tragedy and horror of the Great Plague. Porter's close, clear look at one epidemic's impact on its culture will be of obvious interest to a world still threatened by the capability of biological weapons to spread smallpox or anthrax to millions. (History Book Club selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Sutton Publishing (June 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750932635
• ISBN-13: 978-0750932639
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,374,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Well Illustrated, but Not the Definitive Work, January 29, 2004

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mwreview "mwreview" (Northern California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Plague (Paperback)

I first became aware of this book through the bibliography section of Norman Cantor's In the Wake of the Plague. He noted that the book was valuable mainly for its illustrations. After reading The Great Plague, I am inclined to agree. The subject of the book is the plague that infected London and the surrounding provinces from 1665-67. There are many illustrations throughout the book, some more or less related to the topic, but all interesting and most I have not seen before. Many are examples of contemporary art showing the different provinces or scenes of the epidemic itself. The book is well written for dry facts and numbers, but is not engaging as is, for example, the old Philip Ziegler book on the Black Death. The text is full of statistics, especially in its chapters on London and the Provinces. One, of course, cannot write about the epidemics without statistics on deaths, etc., but too much reliance on listing them for every province can be very tedious for the reader (a chart certainly would suffice and make it easier for the reader to compare affected areas).

In the chapter on the provinces, each province is covered separately which also makes it arduous. I kept losing track of what was where and, with the lack of a map in this book, had problems visualizing where each area was as I have no knowledge of English geography. After chapters of the percentage of deaths, quarantining policies, etc., the final chapter The Plague in Perspective included some issues that I believe might have been covered more; the London fire of 1666 and its alleged role in ending the plague, the effect of the brown rat replacing the black rat, and the distinction of the rat flea and the human flea, to name a few. One part I found particularly interesting was Porter's explanation of the Bills of Mortality and how the causes of deaths were sometimes fudged so that trade and tourism would not be scared off if word of the first signs of epidemic got out. The author also includes the title page of London's 1665 Bills of Mortality from his collection on page 153. For those interested in this subject, The Great Plague is worth owning for the scores of pictures. The text, however is probably a good starting point but is not the definitive work on the Great Plague.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars LONDON'S LAST OUTBREAK, July 16, 2008

By 

Severin Olson (Hyattsville, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Great Plague (Paperback)

I have always found the London plague of 1665 to be especially interesting. This is partly because it was England's last outbreak and one of the last in Western Europe. A scourge that had terrified Europe for over three hundred years, about as long as from 1665 to the present, dissapeared suddenly from the British Isles, never to be seen again to this day. Why? What could have stopped the killer microbe from returning? The truth is we really don't know, and it is possible the plague could return at some point in the future.

I largely agree with the last reviewer about this work. The illustrations are good and a lot of material is covered, but the work is not, as he said, the definitive one on the subject. I would say that Bell's book on the same matter is much better. Porter spends too much time here reporting on matters from place to place, and loses focus in the process. When he departs from this, and tells individual stories, the book is quite interesting, but the departures are rare indeed. Still, those with particular interest in this topic won't regret the purchase of a copy.