• The Great Plague 1665

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What do you think is going on in this picture?

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Learning
Why objectives
was the plague of 1665
so deadly?

Learning Objectives
• Understand what it was like to live in
plague-ridden London.

• To produce a diary entry about the

Plague in London

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What was life like in Seventeenth century London?

Its population had grown from 120,000 to 500,000 in

the space of two hundred years!
By 1665 nearly one British person in ten lived in
London.

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• London was not a nice place to live
• It was cramped, with maze-like
streets.
• Houses were packed into small
spaces and London was full of
slum housing

• London was a very dirty place

and people threw their rubbish in
to the streets

Think! What problems might this cause?

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 Why did the plague break out?

How do these pictures link together to tell

the story of how the plague broke out?

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 = BUBONIC
PLAGUE
+ + +

The flea bit the rat. The rat infected the flea. The flea bit the human.

= PNEUMONIC PLAGUE
+

The infected person coughed near another person who then caught the disease.

Copy these into your book.

Make your drawings simple. Stick people are fine.
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 How did the 1665 outbreak happen?

Plague broke out in London in the spring of 1665.

It probably arrived from Holland where there had
been plague a few years earlier.
The summer of 1665 was extremely
hot so the disease spread quickly.
The death rate rose rapidly through
the summer months.
The wealthy, including the King, many
doctors and some members of the
clergy fled the city.
This helped to spread the disease to
other parts of the country.

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How did the people of London think the plague
spread?
The people of London did not know how the plague was
spreading, though they had many theories.
Foul air
comets,
punishments from God,
dogs, cats,
bad water

There were many explanations, but none of them were

right!

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What did people believe caused the plague?

Sent by God to punish The movements of the

us for our sins. planets.

Were any of these

ideas correct?

Being close to Bad smells.

infected people.
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Symptoms of the plague

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 New ideas
Some new ideas were tried to tackle the plague.
Plague doctors cared for people, and nurses
were hired to visit and record the sick.
Watchmen kept the sick in their houses
so they did not spread the disease.
Houses where people were infected were
marked with a red cross.
Dogs were suspected of carrying plague,
About 40,000 dogs and 80,000 cats were culled.
Rakers (cleaners) removed the sewerage and rubbish from the
streets.

Think! Why might these actions be good for

London?
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 The Plague Doctor

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Plague Doctor
Draw, label and explain the features of the Plague doctor
Leather Hat
Mask Glass Eye
Beak
Wooden Stick

Gown
Leather
Gloves

Full Length
Boots

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The devastation of the Plague

1665 was London’s worse epidemic

about 100,000 people died.

In the third week of September,

8,297 official plague deaths were
reported.

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/fire/map.html
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 Extract from Samuel Pepys diary

• 16 October 1665
But Lord, how empty the
streets are, so many poor
sick people in the streets,
full of sores, and so many
sad stories overheard as I
walk, everybody talking of
this dead, and that man sick,
and so many in this place.

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 Task

• Imagine that you were alive when the Plague

hit London in 1665. You must write a diary
entry describing what it was like in Plague
ridden London.
You must write about

• What London was like..

• What they thought caused the Plague...
• Symptoms of the Plague..
• The ways they tried to stop the spread (the
Plague doctor and watch men)
• The devastation of the Plague...

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 Plenary-Hot seating

• I need one volunteer to come to the

front of the class and respond to
questions from the rest of the class

• The rest of the class now need to write

down a question (back of your book) to
ask our kind volunteer.

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 Plenary

Can you remember At the start of

the lesson the lesson I did
objectives not know that.....

An important One thing I can tell

Question I want to the other members
ask is...... of the class is

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 The plague

London had become a busy port and trading centre, so

there were often outbreaks of plague.

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 The Great Plague

You have probably already Ring a ring a roses,

learnt about the plague A pocket full of
when you were quite young. posies,
The nursery rhyme, Ring a Atishoo,
Ring a Roses is all about the
plague. Atishoo,
The words of the rhyme
we all fall down.
describe the symptoms of
the plague.

How does this well known nursery rhyme

describe the symptoms of the Plague? You
have two minutes to discuss in pairs.
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 Symptoms of the plague

The ‘ring a roses’ refers to the

bleeding under the skin.
The ‘pocket full of posies’ refers Ring a ring a
to the small bags of herbs or roses,
flowers that people carried to
ward off the plague. Many A pocket full
thought the disease was caused of posies,
by foul air. Atishoo,
The sneezing was a symptom of Atishoo,
the disease.
we all fall
‘All fall down’ means that what
followed the sneezing was death.
down.

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