The Great Fire of London
by Ann de Courcy

For ten months there had been a drought, and the stench of London hung heavy on the air. The trickle of smoke that awoke the King's Baker, Thomas Farriner, asleep above his bakery oven in Pudding Lane, at first seemed nothing sinister. But within minutes, the blaze that was to become the Great Fire of London had taken hold. As a new book makes clear, the holocaust that started 335 years ago, in September 1666, was a disaster waiting to happen.

Except for the churches, almost every building in the crowded city of London was made of wood, from which the continuing drought had sucked every last scrap of moisture, so that it was now drier and more flammable than ever. Virtually everything else in the city was also potential kindling, from the barrels of tallow, brandy and tar stocked by the ships' chandlers beside the quays, to the bales of wool and parchments of the shopkeepers.

Any conflagration would also be aided by the small fires that burned in front of some of the houses. The previous year, London had been ravaged by the worst outbreak of plague since the Black Death, its infection believed to travel mysteriously through the air. Smoke, it was thought, was the greatest protection against it. The city was a tinderbox waiting to be struck.

Pudding Lane, off Thames Street, had once been called Red Rose Lane, but as since the time of Richard II, butchers had been allowed to use it to cart offal and intestines (known as puddings) to throw them into the Thames at ebb tide, it had been renamed Pudding Lane. Here lived fish merchants (it was near the Billingsgate fish market), ships' chandlers, whole families crammed into the rooting old wood houses - and the King's Baker, who supplied the Navy with ship's biscuits. Like every street in London, it was filthy, with everything from fish guts and horse manure to human waste thrown out of its houses, usually missing the gutter that ran down its centre.

The night the fire began, Thomas Farriner woke between1am and 2am to find his house on fire. He and his daughter escaped over the roof - their maidservant, too frightened to climb out, perished. Within minutes the blaze, helped by an easterly wind, was serious. The cramped, dry houses caught fire almost spontaneously, their closeness in the narrow fetid lanes creating a chimney effect that sucked in air to feed the flames. Quenching them soon proved impossible. Firefighting equipment had scarcely altered since Roman times - poles for beating out flames, leather buckets, wooden ladders and 'syringes' holding only a gallon of water. There were also firehooks - grappling hooks on long chains - to pull down houses and thus create a firebreak. But these were seldom used as householders often successfully sued  for compensation. 

As the city burned, rumours spread that it had been deliberately set alight. The English were at war with the French and the Dutch, and fears that one of their spies had started it as the first step of an invasion swept through the crowds of citizens taking their goods to the safety of the stone-built churches. Many armed themselves, and those with foreign accents found themselves the target of attacks. A blacksmith beat one Frenchman to the ground with an iron bar, the mob attacked another suspected of carrying a box of fireballs (small balls of flammable material that were lit and tossed through windows). When the box was ripped open, it was found to be holding tennis balls.

It was not until the fire had been burning for 12 hours that the necessary authority to pull down houses was received from King Charles II, restored to his throne only six years earlier. It was brought to the Lord Mayor by the Clerk of the Acts at the Navy Office, Samuel Pepys (who later became famous as the celebrated diarist). "Walking towards the fire, we were stopped in Cannon Street by the abundance of goods and carts with which it was filled," wrote Pepys. "Here we met my Lord Mayor on horseback, with a few attendants, looking like one frightened out of his wits."

Soon afterwards, the King, with his brother, the Duke of York, came to see for himself, sailing down the river from his palace in Whitehall. As darkness fell on that night of Sunday, September 2, the flames had become a great arc, half a mile in length, steadily advancing, the ground behind a black wasteland. As they spread, the shops and warehouses fuelled them. From the ships' chandlers near the Thames poured streams of melted pitch and tallow - the animal fats used in everything from candles and soap to waxing ropes. As the burning fats floated on the river, they ignited everything on the water, from bales of wool to pieces of furniture.

By Monday morning, it was clear that the fire threatened the whole city, not just the squalid streets where the plague had raged. From Whitehall, the King could see that if the fires were not stopped, he too would be burned out. He put his brother, the Duke of York, in charge. The Duke at once set to work organising fire stations, ordering more troops into the city, sending for the Justices of the Peace to work out a plan, and setting up a ring of fire posts ahead of the flames, each with 100 men to beat out the flames. The King and the Duke of York spent most of that day in the city, the King riding around encouraging the workers, the Duke organising the firefighters as men and women- half blinded by smoke and retching from fumes - got lost in the bewildering inferno of smoke and flames, stumbling down narrow streets to try to escape, only to find themselves in a dead end or facing more flames.

Horses escaped from stables or, driven mad by the smell of fire, galloped past whinnying, sometimes with manes or tails aflame. The confusion was made worse by incoming traffic: labourers offering to hire themselves out as carriers of goods, others with horse-drawn vehicles. The hire of a cart rose from two shillings to as much as £40 [400 times]. Some offered their carts, took the money, loaded up the householder's goods - and then disappeared with both.

By now the churches, built of stone and therefore thought to be safe, were so packed with frightened people and their possessions that the only safety lay in the open fields outside London. The wind was now a gale, but its force was hardly necessary. The size and power of the fire had created a firestorm - the rising hot air over a wide area that sucked in air from all around at high speed, thus fuelling the fire with oxygen. Once this happened, stone buildings were no longer a protection. The fire was reaching its climax. Its noise - crackling flames, stone walls exploding outwards, beams snapping, the screaming of frightened people - could be heard in Oxford, 60 miles away.

When dawn broke on Tuesday, the third day of the fire, its heat had distorted the atmosphere over England so violently that in Scotland mirages of floating ships could be seen - rather as mirages of distant oases can be seen in a hot desert atmosphere. Ben Johnson's Mermaid Inn, where Shakespeare used to drink, was destroyed, the gardens in the village of Kensington were buried in ash, and scorched fragments of cloth and burnt books fell in Windsor Great Park. With the verminous warren of slums between Fleet Street and the river totally destroyed, the fire leapt to the Guildhall, where all the city records since its foundation six centuries earlier were stored. All were burned.

The King spent hours at the fire's 'front line', urging on the soldiers, dispensing golden guineas from the pouch slung across his back, getting off his horse to take his place in the lines of sweating men working with axes, shovels and buckets - and urging his reluctant courtiers to do the same. As the fire approached the Fleet and Ludgate prisons, jailers opened the cell doors and allowed the prisoners to escape. Most other Londoners were lying exhausted, with what possessions they had been able to salvage, in the open fields of Soho, Highgate, Moorfields and Finsbury Fields. Then at last came the event that everyone had beleived impossible. The great cathedral of St.Paul's, in which hundreds had taken refuge, sure that it would remain unharmed, began to burn.

Like the circling jackdaws sucked into the flames, with St.Paull's went all the goods brought there for safety. As the cathedral burned, a strange hissing sound was heard - the lead covering six acres of roof was melting, to cascade from the rainspouts and then pour fuming down the cobbled streets. The flames had now almost reached Somerset House, home of the Queen Mother. It began to look as if nothing and no one was safe. The King went back to Whitehall, where he gave orders for departure to Hampton Court Palace at six next morning. The Duke of York, who'd had no more than six hours sleep since Sunday night, went home for a brief rest.

On Tuesday night, the wind changed direction. Now the Tower of London was threatened - and it held 500,000 pounds of gunpowder, the Navy's entire stock. Seamen and hastily press-ganged citizens carried the barrels down to ships, which took them to the safety of Woolwich and Deptford. [Woolwich has been the arsenal since] Houses round about were ruthlessly demolished, the Tower moat widened with gunpowder - with each explosion came panic-stricken roaring from the beasts of the King's Menagerie (his private zoo) within - but the Tower was saved. By morning of Wednesday, September 5, the wind had lessened. To the experienced eye of the Duke of York, riding the streets at 6am, it seemed that despite the scene of desolation, the fire had finally been brought under control. Finally, on Thursday, the Great Fire of London was over, although individual houses and cellars still burned, and the water in wells still bubbled.

Five-sixths of the entire area within the city walls - about 400 acres - had been destroyed, and a further 60 acres outside. More than 13,000 houses, 87 churches and the halls of 52 Livery Companies were no more than ash; and 80 per cent of the population was homeless. No one knows how many people died. The usual figure is a mere handful - four to eight people - since these were the only bodies actually found. But this is strongly disputed by Neil Hanson, author of  'The Dreadful Judgment, The True Story Of The Great Fire Of London'*. "Others, searching the ruins of their houses, perished when walls collapsed upon them," he says. "Nor is it credible that all the citizens were able to rouse themselves from their beds and escape on that first night. Many others died from the hardshipes of living in the open until they could return."

The great drought that had made this holocaust possible was finally ended with a downpour that began on October 16 and lasted uninterrupted for ten days, turning the city into a sea of mud. Yet when workmen opened a cellar in November, they found coals still burning.

Gradually, the people returned, living first in shanty towns, terrified of the robbers who had flocked to London to see if there was still loot to be found in cellars. Pepys, going over the ruins at night, 'rode with my sword drawn in the coach'. But even though the flames had died down, the rumours had not. People found that there was altogether too much coincidence in a fire starting on the quietest day of the week, with a gale blowing and no water available, with an untended baker's oven providing a ready excuse. They began to look for a scapegoat.

They found one in the shape of Robert Hubert, a French Roman Catholic with a palsied arm, who had lived much of his life in London. He made confession after confession, frequently altering his story. Whether any of them was true or inspired by fear, torture or mental instability - he was said to be mentally deficient - no one knows. The baker, Thomas Farriner, who must have been aware that otherwise the wrath of the mob would fall on him for carelessness, swore that his house must have been 'maliciously fired'. 

The jury in the case had no trouble in finding Hubert guilty. He was condemned to death, and following the tradition that the condemned man share his last supper with the prison chaplain, ate a macabre dinner in the ruins of the prison chapel, watched by spectators who had paid for the privelege.

Next morning he was taken to Tyburn by the famous hangman, Jack Ketch. Ahead of him went a wax effigy of the Pope, containing several trussed live cats - their terrible screaming when the hated figure of the head of the Roman Catholic religion was set alight was much enjoyed by the mob.

Hangings took place on Monday afternoons, and the bodies were left hanging a full hour. When the surgeon had certified that Hubert's life was extinct, Ketch stripped the body of its clothes, which would sell, and began to drag the body towards the waiting cart. There was a sudden roar and the mob rushed forward. Ketch quickly stepped aside as the crowd vented their fury and anguish at the loss of their homes and city on Hubert's body, tearing it apart and wrenching off ears, tongue and fingers, and shouting that they wanted war with France to the bitter end.

London rose again - eventually. For several decades, the city remained scarred by large areas of ruins, where plants and weeds grew unchecked. However, the King and the Government knew that this terrible fire had given them an opportunity to create a safer, more modern and spectacular capital than the insanitary maze that had been razed to the ground.

The 1667 Rebuilding Act specified that new houses were to be built only of brick and stone; there were just four types of house allowed, to ensure a more regular street appearance; and the streets themselves were to be wider. Christopher Wren was charged with resurrecting London and he hoped to redesign the city radically. In the end, because of lack of funding, he had to follow the existing street plan.

Of those who perished in the flames of the great conflagration, nothing remained - but modern London was built on their ashes.
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* 'The Dreadful Judgment, The True Story Of The Great Fire Of London'  by Neil Hanson is published by Doubleday.