The Great Pestilence in London

The Great Pestilence, now known as the Black Death, was a devastating wave of disease which killed millions of people in Asia, Europe and North Africa.

The disease was bubonic plague. It arrived in Britain in June 1348, and by November, it had reached London. Nobody knew what caused it, or how to treat it. Plague decimated families, killing rich and poor people – and two Archbishops of Canterbury.

By 1352, an estimated 35,000 Londoners had died, more than half the city’s population. Two emergency cemeteries had to be created to hold the dead.

This devastating disease also had a deep impact on those who survived. It caused changes across medieval society, affecting the cost of living, wages and the balance of power.

Plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria. It’s spread by the bites of fleas which live on rodents. It can also be caught by breathing in droplets released by an infected person when they breathe, talk, cough or sneeze.

Plague can affect people in three ways. Pneumonic plague infects your lungs. Septicemic plague infects your blood. Bubonic plague causes painful lumps, known as buboes, to swell on your neck, armpit and groin.

Bubonic plague was easier to identify because of its visibly grisly symptoms, but we don’t know which form was the most common in the 1300s.

When untreated, plague is incredibly deadly. Pneumonic and septicemic plague kill about 90% of those affected. The other forms kill roughly half.

Today, plague can be treated with antibiotics. Even so, small numbers of people still die from plague around the world.

The Great Pestilence entered Europe from Asia, engulfing the continent between 1347 and 1353.

As the disease spread, so did news of the coming disaster. William Edington, the bishop of Winchester, was “struck by terror” at the thought of it reaching Britain.

In June 1348, plague spread from France to Weymouth, in Dorset. It was in London by November 1348. The peak of the outbreak lasted until the end of spring 1349.

The disease came at a bad time. Famines and food insecurity in the previous decades had left people vulnerable.

An estimated 35,000 people had died by 1352. That was more than half of those living within London’s city walls and its suburbs, which included Southwark and Westminster. London’s population didn’t recover until the 1500s.

There was no central record of deaths in the 1300s. Estimates of the death toll are based on cemetery excavations, the wills of wealthy Londoners and surviving descriptions of the Great Pestilence.

Death was constant and seemingly inescapable. John of Reading, a monk based in Westminster, recalled at the psychological and social effects: “There was in those days death without sorrow, marriage without affection, self-imposed penance, want without poverty, and flight without escape.”

One cemetery was in East Smithfield, just north of the Tower of London. London Museum cares for the remains of over 600 individuals buried there.

We also hold the remains found at the other emergency cemetery, known as West Smithfield, which was located north-west of the City. It may have held 20,000 burials. Sections of it were discovered under Charterhouse Square in 2013 during digging for the Elizabeth Line.

Despite the immense scale of the disaster, the plague victims were buried in an intentional way, organised by the authorities. There were mass graves with multiple burials, sometimes five layers deep. But these weren’t ‘plague pits’ where remains were carelessly thrown in. Instead, the bodies were carefully laid in rows.

Our collection includes 181 coins found with a woman buried at the East Smithfield cemetery, near the Tower of London. It’s rare to find coins with medieval burials. It’s possible that nobody wanted to risk infection by undressing her, meaning her coin pouches were left on her body when she was buried.

King Edward III closed London’s port, but he was too late to help. He postponed Parliament and suspended courts to protect his government, blaming the “terrible pestilence of vast deadliness, daily increasing in the city of London and neighbouring parts”.

The Catholic Christian religion was central to most people’s lives at this time. Before the plague arrived in Britain, church figures organised extra sermons and processions, issuing a notice that it would “help pacify God through prayer”.

Some tried more extreme measures to soften God’s punishment. In September 1349, 120 ‘flagellants’ arrived from Europe. Twice a day, they put on a bloody spectacle by whipping themselves in the street for the world’s sins.

The few trained doctors in London treated wealthy people. At this time, doctors believed sickness was caused by an imbalance in the body’s four ‘humours’. Bloodletting was one treatment.

For everyone else, herbal remedies were a common medicine.

People didn’t know about germs, but they saw that plague spread between people. Londoners left the city if they could, and probably avoided contact with infected people when possible.

The death toll in London and beyond meant less food and other supplies were produced. This increased the cost of living.

But with fewer people alive, the work of surviving artisans and labourers became more valuable. They could charge more for their work and pick their preferred employer. Labourers seeking better jobs flocked to London and landlords lowered rents to attract or keep tenants.

The country’s powerful elite weren’t happy. New laws attempted to return wages to their pre-plague level and to stop people moving around in search of better work. The laws were one cause behind the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381.

After this initial wave of disease, there were further outbreaks every few years.

In London, the disease was back by 1361, and returned many more times over the next four centuries. “Plague comes seldom, but then very sore” was an English proverb in use from the 1500s.

The Great Pestilence that hit London in the 1340s was part of the same long-lasting pandemic as the Great Plague of 1665 – the last major outbreak to affect England.

In comparison, the Great Plague of 1665 killed around 20% of London’s population, a smaller portion of Londoners. But the city was much larger in 1665, so around 100,000 Londoners died – nearly triple the number who died from plague between 1348 and 1352.