Crisis

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Houses where someone had the plague were shut up with the whole family inside for about a month, with a watchman outside day and night. Large gatherings such as plays and fairs were banned so that the infection could not spread through crowds.

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Interpretation A is largely convincing. Many of the rich did leave London. By July 1665 the King and court had moved to Hampton Court, then to Salisbury and Oxford, where Parliament met in October. Wealthy merchants, lawyers and many physicians, such as Thomas Sydenham, followed. The poor could not afford to leave, and anyone travelling needed a certificate of health.

It is also right that the plague was worst in the poor suburbs. The crowded out-parishes outside the walls, such as St Giles-in-the-Fields, Cripplegate, Whitechapel, Stepney and Southwark, had far more deaths than the City inside the walls. People there lived in overcrowded, dirty housing where rats and fleas thrived. When the rich left, trade collapsed: servants were dismissed and watermen, porters and craftsmen lost their work. Poor families who were shut up in their houses could not earn money and depended on parish relief.

However, the interpretation oversimplifies. Not all the rich 'simply left'. The Lord Mayor, Sir John Lawrence, stayed, and the Duke of Albemarle remained in London to keep order. Archbishop Sheldon stayed at Lambeth, Samuel Pepys kept working for the navy, and some doctors, such as Nathaniel Hodges, stayed to treat the sick. Dissenting ministers such as Thomas Vincent preached to the people when other clergy had gone. Parishes also paid for nurses, food and pest houses. The plague did not only strike the poor either: wealthy households suffered too, and at Eyam in Derbyshire people of all ranks died.

Overall, Interpretation A is convincing that the poor suffered most, because of where they lived and their lack of choice, but it exaggerates in suggesting that all the rich fled and the poor were left completely without help.

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The diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn are important because they are detailed eyewitness accounts that show how people experienced the plague and the fire, something statistics cannot show.

First, they give vivid detail. On 7 June 1665 Pepys saw houses in Drury Lane marked with red crosses and 'Lord have mercy upon us', the first he had ever seen, and was so alarmed that he bought roll-tobacco to smell and chew. During the fire he watched from a boat as people threw their goods into the river and pigeons, refusing to leave their homes, fell burned into the flames. Evelyn described the stones of St Paul's exploding and molten lead running down the streets.

Second, they show how people and the authorities behaved. Pepys records that he went to Whitehall on the first day of the fire, that the King ordered houses to be pulled down, and that the Lord Mayor was exhausted and could not make people obey him. He also shows ordinary fears and reactions: he worried that his new periwig might be made from the hair of plague victims, and during the fire he buried his wine and Parmesan cheese in his garden.

Third, they help historians test other records. On 31 August 1665 Pepys noted the official plague figures but added that the true number of deaths that week was feared to be near 10,000, which supports the view that the Bills of Mortality undercounted.

The diaries are also valuable because they were private: Pepys wrote in shorthand and his diary was not published until 1825, so he was frank. However, they were written by wealthy, well-connected men who saw only part of London, and Pepys took his figures from the Bills. Even so, they are far more reliable than later accounts such as Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year', written in 1722.

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The poor suffered most from the Great Plague, but the Great Fire hit wealthier Londoners hardest financially. Overall I largely agree with the statement, because the plague was by far the deadlier crisis.

In the plague, the poor clearly suffered most. The deaths were concentrated in the crowded out-parishes outside the City walls, such as St Giles-in-the-Fields, Cripplegate, Stepney and Southwark, where people lived in overcrowded, dirty housing full of rats and fleas. The rich, including the King and court, could leave London, but the poor could not. When the wealthy fled, servants were dismissed and craftsmen, porters and watermen lost their work, so many survivors faced hunger. Poor families were shut up in their houses with the sick, and they depended on parish relief that could not cope. Even their deaths were not always counted: Pepys wrote in August 1665 that many poor deaths went unrecorded because there were so many.

However, other groups suffered in the plague too. Some wealthy households were struck, merchants lost business as trade collapsed, and officials who stayed, such as the Lord Mayor and the Duke of Albemarle, risked their lives.

The Great Fire was different. It destroyed most of the City inside the walls, which was home to wealthy merchants and tradesmen. About 13,200 houses, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and 44 livery company halls were destroyed, and the damage was estimated at about 10 million pounds. Property owners and merchants therefore lost the most money and stock, and landlords and tenants faced long disputes over who should pay to rebuild, which the Fire Court had to settle. Other groups suffered as well: foreigners and Catholics were attacked and blamed, and the Frenchman Robert Hubert was hanged; the Church lost 87 parish churches and St Paul's; and the government lost tax revenue in the middle of the Dutch war.

Yet even in the fire the poor had least to fall back on. Tenants and lodgers lost their homes, tools and few possessions, had no savings or insurance and camped in Moorfields and Islington, while wealthier people could stay with friends or move to the suburbs.

The two crises were also very different in scale. Very few deaths were recorded in the fire, but the plague killed perhaps 100,000 people, most of them poor. So, overall, I agree that the poor suffered more than anyone else, because the plague, which killed mainly the poor, was far more deadly than the fire, although the fire caused the greatest financial losses for wealthier Londoners.