The Great Plague started in May 1665 and it was nasty stuff – worse than Man Flu. It’s reckoned that it killed 75,000 Londoners

A little biology lesson! If you see a rat in London today then it is a Brown rat.

Back in the 1600s, however, the resident rat was the Black Rat and it was believed for some time that these carried the Bubonic plague which was then passed to people by fleas.

This has proved not to be the case and the disease was actually passed from human to human by fleas and lice.

Not the first plague epidemic in London, that being the Black Death in 1348/49. Last recorded case in UK was in 1679. The last recorded case in China though, was in 2019 – but 2022 in the USA.

Want to know more? Come on either my Billingsgate or City Essentials walk.