The Great Plague

THE GREAT PLAGUE is the ideal study of the most famous killer in British history. The Great Plague of 1665-66 is Britain's best known epidemic. Carried by fleas, it decimated the population of England in a little over a year. The disease had not been absent from England since the Black Death in 1348, but there had been ten virtually plague-free years from 1655. People thought that perhaps the scourge had gone forever. But in 1665 it returned with a vengeance. In London alone, 100,000 out of a total population of 500,000 died. The plague and its dreadful effects have stayed in the popular imagination ever since. Often remembered for its devastating impact on the capital, the plague struck other urban centres as heavily, carrying off half the population of Colchester and causing high mortality in cities such as Norwich and Cambridge. Not even country villages escaped.