After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Great Fire of London As It Happened

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

The Fire that struck London in 1666 was one of the city's darkest chapters. In this episode, Anthony and Maddy examine the accounts of people who witnessed the disaster at the time, tracing the story from its origin in Pudding Lane right up until its dying embers...Who quickly did the Fire spread? How did the terrified population turn to scapegoating the innocent? And how did the aftermath of this catastrophe shape the city we know today?Edited by Tim Arstall, Produced by Tom Delargy, Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're in London, early on the morning of the 2nd of September 1666. The air is dry as parchment. The great city's timbered houses creak in a warm, restless wind. Down a narrow lane of bakeries and warehouses, a single ember slips from a dying oven fire in the King's bakery, tiny, unnoticed and deadly. Within minutes, flames lick the beams, crawl up the walls and roar into the night. While the people of the nearby area try in vain to stop the fire, the majority of Londoners are fast asleep.

They don't know it yet. But within hours, London will face one of the greatest challenges in its history. Right, we are back in 1666. And I think this is a date that people are, it's one of those dates, right? it's the 1066. It's a 1666. What is it with the 16th? 1966? Yeah, what happened in 1960s? Oh, okay. Apparently. It's that, there are dates that are emblazoned in the public imagination and this is certainly one of them. And for a good reason, it's a very dramatic event. But before we got onto the event itself, we're talking, of course, about the Great Fire of London. Give us some context around this part of the 17th century. Okay. So the 17th century, there's a lot going on up until 1666. There is. There really is a lot going on.

There is, and do you know what? I will concede that whilst the 18th century is the best century, for so many reasons, the 17th century does draw my attention. Good. I'm writing a book about it. So, I'm glad to hear us. And then that'll be fine. I'll know all about it. Okay, so we've had the execution of Charles I first, obviously, the Civil War. We've had Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. All that's been and gone, but it's still obviously very much within living memory. Charles II is back on the throne. What are your feelings on Charles II? So we have this idea of the merry monarch and we have. But actually what Charles II brings is this continued idea or this restored idea of an absolute monarch of somebody who is entirely in control. There are no new limitations put on the restored Stuart monarchy when they come back in 1660. But, and I think we overlooked this with Charles II sometimes, he's actually quite a good politician, despite this idea of him being a merry monarch.

He can balance. There's a lot of problems going on in his brain. I mean, he has to be a good politician. Look what's happened to his dad. Like he has to be able to navigate this. And what happens to his brother afterwards? So he really does find a balance. And it's basically something along the lines of, yes, there's absoluteism in the back of his mind.

But there's also this thing of going, I need to play the game here. This is territory. I need to smooth it over. So I think he's more interesting than we think he is. Yeah. And I think it's important as well to think about the fact that he, yes, the rest of restoration of the monarchy has happened, but it's not that he's come back to stability and everything is fine. Again, the world has been literally turned on its head. You know, hierarchy has been collapsed.

And now, during his reign, we have the plague that strikes London in 1665. And the king himself actually goes out to Oxford and spends, I think, the whole year, basically, out there trying not to die of plague, which, lucky for him. He can do that. But, you know, a quarter of the population is killed off. There is also war, the English are having a largely naval conflict at this point with the Dutch. Also, there's a severe drought, which, you know, we're about to talk about the Great Fire of London, think about how dry those timber buildings are in London. So there's a lot going on. There's a lot for the king to be navigating. Obviously, there's the ghost of his father beheaded sort of hanging over him and the threat of that happening again.

And, you know, the stakes could not be higher for restoring this. but 1666 is not a great year for anyone. It's also one of those things that 1666 that almost exist. You know, we've given this context and I think it's really important and it's really important to know that in terms of Charles's reign and, you know, he's in London for most of this. But actually, so often when we think about 1666, it does exist. Yeah. It's this thing onto itself.

It's a microcosm of nothingness and fire and fury and chaos. And then we just move on with the rest of the. rain or the rest of the decade or whatever it is. One of things interesting as well is that even in that moment, people were like, this is not a good year. People recognised it as being this isolated thing. So George Wharton,

who's a poet and astrologer at the time, at the start of the year, he says, now 1666 has come, when shall be the day of doom? She's not a great new year's resolution. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, oh, another year.

It's going to be shit this year, lads. And now there's three sixes. So we're absolutely doomed. Yeah, exactly. It's a really volatile time, the 1660s. There is this relief, of course, when Charles is restored. But there is also, as you are saying, and I think really importantly, going, we're not settled here.

We don't know if we know all the answers. We're just trying to find a way back, basically. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we're going to talk a bit about the fire and how it begins. Just on the outset, I want to ask the question, do you think you would survive it? Statistically, yes, I would. I feel like I would have already died of plague at this point.

So I wouldn't even see the fire happening. Like, also, so pregnant right now. Like, I would just sit down and let... Wait, you're pregnant? I'd sit down and let the fire consume me. Have you told HR about this? What are we going to do? Who was the father?

Shocking. It's a strange moment in its... There's been a lot of omens, put it that way. There's been, like, a king has died. Like, we cannot fully grasp the importance of what that tumult means. And now we have these omens in 1666, and we have, You know, the plague has been, as you say, they do believe that something is afoot. And here we go. Now, in 1666, we see this day of doom or these days of doom coming.

So let's talk about how the fire begins, because I think that is one of the things that interests people. And it's one of the things that there are a lot of myths around. Okay, so let me take you into London. And we have a little map here in your notes, Anthony, which looks very official and very well done. But it sort of shows the shape of the city in this moment, you know, stretching from the Tower of London in the east, sort of just past St. Paul's Cathedral. Is the red bit the bit that was affected? Yes, I believe so. Yeah, yeah.

So we've got like the shape of the city and then the shape of where the fire was. So you can really see like the absolute devastation. This is going to be a catastrophic disaster for the capital city of England in this moment. So just to point out as before we go on with it, what I can see in here is the area that's in red. and we'll share this on socials is what's affected by the fire. And it's mostly within the city walls, but it also extends beyond. Peeps' home is just on the edge.

It's not quite engulfed in the flames. We have Pudding Lane, of course, famously. We'll come to that. St. Paul's Cathedral, as it was then. Sheepside is essentially, absolutely lambastard. That's right. The centre of everything, isn't it? Newgate and Ludgate. So Fleet Street, of course.

So, you know, these are landmark places that are, I can see also, I've never seen it depicted like this. This is a really useful map. The walls. to a certain extent in certain areas are keeping it in. Yes. There's an end of spread based on that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And we'll talk about how the fire is managed. But yeah, definitely the sort of spread of the fire going west. And, you know, this is, it's heading up Fleet Street and it's going towards Whitehall and Westminster the heart of royal and governmental power in this moment. So, you know, this is a disaster that threatens to take out not just domestic spaces, people's livelihoods, but literally the heart of power.

having just been restored in terms of the monarchy. So let us go to the beginning of the fire. Where did that take place, Anthony? In my head, it's Pudding Lane. It is Pudding Lane. It is Pudding Lane in Thomas Farrina's bakery. Farraner is an interesting one. So his bakery is known at the time as the King's bakery,

not because it was making cakes for the King, but because he was making these biscuits called Hard Tack, which were used for the Royal Navy. They were biscuits that would last long time on ships. Don't forget we're at war with a Dutch. in this moment. So it's really, really important. So he's kind of providing a vital service. And putting Lane is relatively close to the Thames as well. So you can think about these biscuits being sort of taken down. I mean, it really is. I'm just looking on the map here.

Yeah, yeah. This map has changed my life slightly. This is actually really good. You've changed your whole perspective. Now, come here to me before you go on, Fariner, and he's a baker and you know I love a bit of French. Farine is the French for flour. Yeah, sure. Maybe, maybe, I mean, I don't think he is French in this moment. No, no, no, yeah. We'll have to get ancestry on to him to do it. to do it. To do it. His family history.

Okay, so talking of family, he lives there with his daughter, Hannah. We know she's called Hannah and also a son imaginatively, also called Thomas Fariner. They love it. There's also a maid servant in the house who goes unnamed, of course. And also a journeyman or an apprentice, so a kind of young boy who's learning the trade of a baker called Thomas Dagger, which I just think is the coolest name ever. Somebody needs to write like a crime series based on Thomas Dagger, right? Thomas Dagger's mysteries of 17th Century London. We need to stop giving away our good ideas.

I'm not going to do that. So they can take that. That's fine. You don't have time to do this. I might. I think he sounds great. No, you don't. You're having a baby, for God's sake.

Perfect time to write a crime mystery series. I'm in denial. It's fine. Okay, so on the 2nd of September at 1 a.m. Thomas Dagger, as the apprentice is sleeping on the ground floor, probably in the kitchen of the house, is he's woken up and he smells smoke coming from the baking house. So the baking house is a slightly separate part of the building. he manages to wake himself up, he gets upstairs and he alerts the rest of the family and the maid servant as well.

But already, when they come down to exit the building, the fire is already too big. It's spreading through the building. They can't get out. So they all go back upstairs. And they have to climb out of a window. We know this from, there was an inquest in 1667, so the following year. And this information is given by Farano himself. And he says that they have to escape out the window and they kind of climb along the guttering.

to a neighbour's window, which, I mean, immediately I'm out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, would I survive that? Yeah. Climbing, guttering. Listen, I'd give it a go. Yeah, I mean, and the buildings are not that high. That's true.

Yeah, you still don't want to fall. I know, God, no, I need my ankles for all the high kicks I do. But yes, no, yes. There is someone who doesn't survive, unfortunately, though, and that's the maid servant whose name we do not know. She's described as being too terrified to move. And I just find this so frustrating because why, why? does nobody go and get her?

Is she just refusing to go? She's too terrified to move. Move. Get out. Leave her. Leave her behind. We'll just get out and shimmy down the drain pipe. So she is the first victim of what is going to become the Great Fire of London. But at this point, it is just a little fire that's happening in putting lane in this one house. As it grows, the neighbours realise what's happening. They're waking up to the shouts. People are grabbing buckets of water.

They're trying to put it out. They're trying to also stop the spread to the neighbouring houses. They know to do that right. Like this is nothing new. This is not, they are prepared in a way to try and stop the spread of fire in 17th century London. Yeah. And this isn't the first fire that ever happened. They happen all the time. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, you're thinking about these timber frame buildings. So you need to stop the fire in its tracks. But also, if you can't do that, you need to go into your own home and remove your valuables. And that's something that we'll see throughout the following hours and days. Not your maid servant. She's not worth saving. No, necklaces, but not there. She's gone.

Now, so we're at 1 a.m. here. We're at 1am. The other thing that's happening now, as people are trying to put out the fire and it's growing and growing, is that the wind is getting up. There's an easterly wind and it is starting to take those sparks and transfer them to other buildings or the rooftops or the sort of timber frames. So it's going to build.

Yeah. And the wind is a key element in this because, again, honestly, I'm going to definitely post this map because this map really shows it. Yeah. Like other than that, you're just imagining. but like you can literally see the pattern where the wind will have taken it. And again, Samuel Pepys is very lucky to be on the other side of the breeze, essentially. This starts picking up as the...

Samuel Pepys, as we'll get into, always lucky to not get his come-offence. Always lucky to not get burned alive. Okay, so we're moving on in the evening. The fire starts at about 1am, and now we have a wind that's driving flames and debris. Yes, so this is going to, this is catching really, really quickly. It's spreading really fast. So much so that people have to wake the Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Blood worth up and say, your city is on fire.

Like, this has got to the point already where we need to intervene. And he supposedly famously says. I don't know what you're about to say, but I know he didn't say this. Whatever you're about saying. Well, he apparently, he's so annoyed at being woken up and fair play, that he says of the fire, a woman could piss it out. He's like, basically, it's nothing. Yeah.

It's, you know, so not only is he not a very good man. He's also a misogynist. He's like, it's so petty. Even a woman could deal with this. I'm going to say he didn't say it. I don't know. I have never done any research into that. I mean, I think what is fair and true to say is that throughout this, he does not react in a timely manner.

Sure. Right. And he doesn't take it seriously early enough. So I think that's where this is coming from, even if he didn't say that line. I mean, I sort of hope that he did because it's a great line. Yeah, yeah, it's great. But that's why I don't think he probably is it too well done. It's one of those ones, you know, when you've spoken to someone who's been rude to you and then like,

the next day you're like, oh, I should have said this to them. And then when you tell the antidote, and you're like, and then I said. Even a woman could piss it out. Exactly, yeah. But actually, what are they going to do? How are they going to piss it out? What's the fire system in... So there are fire engines, not blue lights and hoses and that kind of thing.

So these are basically heavy tanks of water that are pulled by horses. And they've got manual pumps that can sort of spray on the buildings. Obviously, these are not very easily movable. Yeah. They're not arriving very fast. And also, at this point, people are now fleeing in the wake of the fire that is spreading through these streets in rapid succession. And they are clogging the roads. Yeah.

So they're going in one way, screaming and shouting and carrying their goods. And these horse-drawn vehicles are trying to get close to the fire. I also imagine trying to manage a horse in the face of a fire. Yeah. And towards the panic of all the people. You know, even at a time when people are very sort of literate in terms of. horses and everyone is riding them, attaching them to carriages. Like, they are used in everyday life by all manner of people. But I just think this is a disaster zone that these animals are entering

into. I think that's quite interesting. I also think it's like, you mentioned the rows being clogged with people, but this is also a time when the rows are pretty clogged anyway, and narrow anyway. Yet these are all, you know, the old winding medieval streets. There are overhanging buildings. It's hard to get through. They're very, very dark as well. This is nighttime, don't forget still. Obviously, the fire will be lighting up the sky as you get closer to it. You'll be able to see more. But there's sort of the gloom of all the alleyways and stuff. And as you say, the streets are kind of clogged with filth and sewage and all sorts of things.

And maybe at this point already sort of abandoned carts of goods, people fleeing. This is what I'm thinking. Also, and I know this is something that we see even today in disasters like this, but certainly throughout history, is people start robbing and, you know, entering people's homes, nicking things. So you've also got that going on. So for these, the people pulling the fire engines, you're having to navigate a lot of chaos,

a lot of conflict that's going on, a lot of panic, all of this. And this continues until at least 3 a.m. So we're two hours later then. Yeah. And we're still spreading. People are trying to fight the fire with these fire engines and horses.

People are fleeing. There is chaos without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, we're not getting anywhere, are we? We know this gets worse. It's getting worse. So the reason that we've included 3am is this is when Samuel Peep's, not a friend of the pod, sort of arrives on the scene. This is when we start to get his famous account.

And he's not far, I now know, from the map. Yeah, he's not far. So he lives really close to the Tower of London. So on the far right-hand side of the city walls, the sort of easterly edge, he's not that far from putting lane, really. He has like two or three streets over, right? Yeah, yeah. So he is awoken by his maids who, I mean, frankly, I don't know why they didn't slit his throat. in the night anyway, but they didn't.

So they wake him up and they say, there's a fire, what do you want us to do? Are we going to leave? There are people running away in the streets. Should we be doing the same? What's happening? He goes to an upstairs window and he looks and he can see the fire sort of taking over London.

And I just think, I mean, that's... That visual. It's absolutely incredible. And he decides, he sort of observes it for a while and he sees that the wind is blowing it away. Right. And it's still far enough away from his house that he's like, I think we can stay. And who's about to sleep?

I just think it's really unusual behaviour. I thought you were going to say, and this would be an unusual enough, I thought you were going to say, and he sat down at his desk in this thing and ran, Dear Diary. Yeah, dear to his house is crazy today. No, he goes back to sleep. He goes back to sleep. But doesn't that tell you something about peeps, sure.

But doesn't it tell you something about how Londoners viewed fire? And yes, this goes more. And how even though this is growing rapidly, getting very, very, very frightening and serious, very quickly, nobody realizes how severe it is. He's not saying, this is cataclysmic, this has never happened before. He's going, ah, there's a fire in London. This is bad, but I know what this looks like. You know, for all peep's many, many, many faults. You know, he's someone who is very inquisitive and curious about the world around him and also is involved in sort of civic life. If at this point he realized that the city was properly being destroyed, he would want to go and

witness that. And at this point, he doesn't. He's like, it'll be put out. It'll fizzle that. It's He's a chronicler. That's what he is going to do. Now, as I say, he's a chronicler. We know what he does say eventually around the fire because obviously he leaves an account, but he's not the only one that's leaving accounts. No, he's not. So we have multiple voices in this and multiple sort of viewpoints as well. People have different ages from different parts of the city, which I always love as a way to kind of recreate a historical moment. So at 7 a.m., Pepys wakes up again. I'm going to give you what he says first of all. And then we'll talk. across some of the other people. So he wakes up. He takes a short walk down to the tower, so down to the water. Wait, we're at 7 a.m. now. Yeah. He had a nice old now. He really had a, yeah, well, the city burned. He was just fine. So he goes down to the tower, which is obviously on the Thames. And at this point, you know, the flames have reached the river. And of course, there's no way for them to go because they can't jump across the river. The river's too wide. But they, you know, the fire is still spreading north and northwest as well. So by this point,

like, it's very significant. And he says that he goes down there. He says, There I did see the houses at the end of London Bridge all on fire and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge. So down with my heart full of trouble to the lieutenant of the tower who tells me it began this morning in the King's Baker's House in Pudding Lane. So already they're pointing fingers and saying it started here. And it shows you as well how quickly news travelled that people are not going, shit, there's a fire, we've got to run. They're also going, there's a fire. Did you hear it started in Pudding Lane at Thomas Farran's house? which is, yeah.

Again, you know, earlier you talked about the literacy around horses. It says the same around fire. They know what they need to know, if that makes sense. They know how it moves. They know how it behaves. He looks out of his window. Peep's looks out of his window. He's like, I don't need to go anywhere.

This is going the other direction. That's how literate I am in the spreading of fire. And how confident he is in that he goes to sleep several hours. And then the keeper at the Tower of London says, already within what, six hours, seven hours, he's going, it started there. They have established that through their knowledge of how this is working, really, really quickly. So that's interesting in itself. Yeah, and I think what's interesting as well, just the little detail that he has in there about

the houses at the end of London Bridge. And thinking about bridges in this moment, you know, often sort of built up in and off themselves with, you know, sort of buildings or shops or whatever across them, that is an opportunity for the fire to leap. Across the river, yeah. And so people, you know, suddenly will be, that's why he's mentioning that in particular rather than all that stuff that's happening behind him in the north part of the city that it's like, oh, yeah, that's about to spread. That's about to. jump. So this is a really dangerous moment now. We've entered the morning of the second day,

essentially. Now, the other person that we're going to hear from, there are several, but I think this is a fascinating viewpoint. This is from someone called William Taswell, who is 14 years old at the time, and he's at Westminster School. And I think this is so interesting, because it kind of, it gives you a sense of, I'm always very interested in childhood in the past, or sort of teenagehood, you know, which obviously not a sort of term or a concept applied to people of this age in this moment. But that boundary between. child and adult, and the way that William Tessel sees things, how I perceives what's happening, how he perceives the panic, the violence, in quite a grown-up manner, actually. It's really interesting.

But do you want to have a little read of, I'm going to force you to work for this. No, do. Have a little read of what he says. So this is an account that he writes of things that he sees around about 10 or 11 a.m. in that morning. Okay, so he writes, I perceived some people below me running to and fro in a seeming disquietude. and consternation. Immediately, almost a report reached my ears that London was in a conflagration. Without any ceremony, I took my leave of the preacher, and having ascended Parliament steps near the Thames,

I soon perceived four boats crowded with objects of distress. Oh, interesting. These had escaped from the fire scare under any other covering except that of a blanket. So he's witnessing, you know, this kind of vivid scene of chaos, people running around. but also people now getting into boats, putting their belongings into boats, covering them with blankets to try and keep them from the fire. So people are really mobilising at this point. The fire's now been burning for almost 12 hours, I suppose. You know, sort of 10 hours, something like that. So there's, talking about that literacy again, people are well aware of what they need to do in this moment.

And the way that the fire is now spreading it is beyond hope for a lot of people who live in that area. Their houses are already destroyed. So they are displaced. They are fleeing for their lives and they're taking their goods with them. The other person that we hear from is John Evelyn, who's a writer and a minor government official. And I just love the 17th century for like, if you're any kind of talented man, you're usually like a government official as well as being. Whatever that means. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Like you just have some kind of official position whilst also being like a writer or a poet or whatever. But he also sees the fire. And this is sort of later on in the day on the second of September. And he has dinner. So again, kind of people who aren't in the immediate sort of path of the fire are still. going about their normal routines whilst keeping an eye on what's happening.

And then in a sort of weird dark tourism twist, he takes a coach with his wife and son to South of the river, he's crossed over the Thames here, to sort of get a good look at what's happening. And I just think that's so fascinating. This is already, you've got to think about the spectacle of it, the fact this is a really sort of apocalyptic vision of the city

and something that you, if you were any kind of chronicler or commentator in this time you would want to go and see. So he says, there we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the waterside, and had now consumed all the houses, from the bridge, all Thames Street and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the three cranes, and so returned exceedingly astonished.

So what is really clear from Evelyn Peeps, from what's his name, Taswell. What's really clear from these accounts is that at this point, even the following morning, it has not slowed down. We might have this idea in our head that it's like, oh, well, you know, daylight has come and they've got control over it. But especially from Evelyn's account there, we're raging still here.

It's getting worse and worse and worse. And as that happens, panic is getting worse and worse and worse. Mobs are building now. So people are kind of coming together not only to try and save buildings, the path of the fire or to escape, but also to kind of almost riot in the streets. You know, people are getting angry. People are asking why is nothing being done? Where is the Lord Mayor? Where's the king? Where are the authorities? Who is dealing with this? Why is this being allowed to spread like this? So things are becoming more and more desperate. Peeps by the third of September at 4 a.m.

So this is the next calendar day. Yeah, yeah. He, interestingly at this point, has packed up much of his house. So he's not so confident now. He's not so confident. And I wonder if there, This is, because the wind is still blowing in the same direction. The fire is not near his house. But I wonder if there's a sense of London has now become unruly. Sure. And I need to protect things. And, you know, famously he hides his parmesan and all that.

You know, buries it underground and things. Which, you know. It's like, I'm not missing out of my knocking. Yeah. I don't care about this fire. But he describes going out into the streets and he says, Lord, to see how the streets and the highways are crowded with people running and riding and getting of carts at any rate to fetch away things.

I reckon you can make a pretty penny if you owned a cart in this moment. Do you know what's really coming up for me, and I haven't really noticed this before, even when we have spoken about the Great Fire, is that there's a concentration on things and objects as opposed to people and lives, which of course they're concerned with that too. But there really is this idea of let's not lose everything, even if the house goes. Your status, your position in life, your livelihood, your wealth is measured in things,

not in necessarily coin in the bank. It's not modern day fire health and safety regulations where it's like leave your laptop and get out. No, it's like, go back in there now and get those coins. What would you rescue you from your house? Obviously, husband and dogs are around and they're fine. But an object. Oh, God, Maddie.

Everything I own is in storage at the moment as well. I think you say everything I own is hugely valuable. Stuff's not important to me. No, I'm joking. Stuff is very important. I actually this is triggering because we are moving

at the moment as well you know and everything can go in a fire everything I just let it all burn I have no just start afresh just start afresh we might as well

so this is a really bad question for me right now that's a nice revelation that you've had what about you Maddie? God I don't know I think I have an old suitcase in my house

where I just shove like all of my like my birth certificate the marriage certificate, some pictures of our wedding, like just stuff, you know, stuff that's important, but that you never really have to look at. I think I'd probably have to grab that.

That would be quite valuable. I mean, I only know because I literally just shove it into this box. Same thing. There's no order in the box. It's literally just shoved in. So I'd probably have to rescue that. Yeah, or... No, not or.

You've had one thing and that's it. You're done. Yeah, sure. We've got that. Let's go with that. Okay. We can have one thing. Yeah.

So we've escaped the fire. So people are really panicking. People are getting angry. It is now that... the king, puts his brother the Duke of York in charge of the firefighting efforts. Obviously, he's like, I'm the king, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be doing this. Yes, it's James. So he's like, James, you go and sort this out. You go and deal with this? No, James's not a bad person to put in charge of that. On paper, on paper. He is quite soldierly.

He's very dedicated. He's very like, he's a man of action. Yeah. So I can see it. And so it's like, okay, the Duke of York is here. Guys, this is good. So they do things that they set up command posts along the edge of the fire. So they're really trying to contain it now. Firefighters are abandoning their posts, left, right and center. And so the Duke of York's like, okay, we're going to offer huge rewards, financial rewards for firefighters who stay at their post. So that's the first thing they're like, stay here and you'll be rich. Whether that actually materializes into anything, I'd love to know. But that's the idea. Also, they start press ganging people into service. No, perfect. Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For those who've run up. I'm going to force you.

Yeah. And I guess as well, like people are joining in and want to help with this. moment, right? Like, especially if they live on the street that's on fire, like, they're going to want to do something. Would you be offering your services? I mean, I may surprise myself, Andrew here, by saying, yeah, I think I probably would. I think in this circumstance, you'd have to. There are certain things where I'm like, catch you later. This might not be one of them. I'd be like, look, can I do something here? Just the back of your head disappearing through the smoke. Bye, Anthony. Even Shane turns around and I'm just not there anymore. He's like, okay. I'm taking the dogs and I've run. No, I think I would, yeah. Okay. Okay. The other thing that they start to do is they realize that they need to start making fire breaks in a

serious way now. So this means the pulling down of houses. Don't forget, it's quite easy to pull a house down in this period because it's just a tip of frame in order to stop the fire. Now, this is not going to prove popular, of course, if you're living somewhere that's not yet on fire. And the Duke of York comes on and says, we're pulling down your house or your bakery or your smithy or whatever it is. Yeah, you're the firebreak basically. Yeah, you can be like, no, I think next door should be. I'm good. Thank you. So people are starting to get angry about this. However, the fire breaks do start to have an effect. Also, important in this moment, by this stage, is that the wind starts to die off a little bit.

And really, that might be the most important thing, realistically, right? Yeah, yeah. So the combination of the two means that the fire isn't spreading, but there does not end us the chaos. So fire is somewhat contained. It's starting to, I mean, I say it's starting to fizzle up. Peeps famously reports six months later that London is still smoldering. from the fire. So it's not like it's going to be out overnight. Yeah. But it's not, the spread is slowing down. Okay. Essentially. But there are now knock on social and cultural

issues that have arisen from this. Yeah. I mean, hundreds of people are displaced now. Their homes, their livelihoods are destroyed. Where are they going in this moment? We've seen that some of them have gone to the river and gone to boats and things. That's not a permanent solution. John Evelyn again, he describes on the 4th of September that he starts to see popping up around the city what are essentially refugee camps of people who have nowhere to go, who are still carrying what they could from their home, and just sort of set up in different pockets around the city. Do you want to have a little read of his account here? I would love to. Where is it? Oh, it's there. Yeah, yeah. The poor inhabitants dispersed all about

St. George's. More fields as far as high gate and several miles in circle. Some under tents, others under miserable huts and hovels without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who from delicateness, riches and easy accommodations in stately and well-furnished houses, were now reduced to extremist misery and poverty. So everything is gone for most people. Yeah, and what I think so interesting is, you know, we're thinking about the 17th century in that wider context here, that we've had this period of upheaval with the civil war when the royalists and, you know,

the most privileged aristocrats and elite in society have found themselves kicked out of their homes, their houses, their property co-opted for a different cause and those hierarchies have collapsed. Some of that has been restored. And now we're seeing again, the rich, you know, fire doesn't discriminate, which, oh my God, there's a hilarious,

I mean, it's not very hilarious, like a photo of like a modern day fire service. I think it was somewhere in London and they'd tried for like Pride Month or something to, you know, to spread fire. safety to put up something on the side of the thing to say, like, fire doesn't discriminate. But then it was so threatening as in like, it will also burn your house down. Fire doesn't discriminate. Even the gays aren't safe.

Exactly. So, you know, that's just maybe thinking of that. But, you know, the idea here, I suppose is that the wealthy, the most privileged have had everything turned to ash as well as the poorest. We've already had the plague in this moment that has already upended all these kind of hierarchies and stuff. And now we've got this. again with the fire and this kind of, yeah, this collapse of the system of power and wealth and everything that the city is kind of built on and functions on and supports. And now you've got these these camps. The shape of the city has changed as well, which I think so interesting that, you know, the roots that people are aware of are gone now. Yeah, the communities that people

live in. You think of someone like Thomas Fariner, who, by the way, is now one of the people in these camps. He is displaced. He's lost his home, of course, on Pudding Lane. And he's obviously very nervous about people going, aren't you the guy who started this? Get him, kind of thing. But, you know, there's a sort of a sense that someone like him would exist on Pudding Lane, and obviously he's got his apprentice who might run errands and take the hard-tack biscuits down to the river or wherever they're being distributed. But there's a sense that London exists in pockets for ordinary people, that you know the

streets around your home, as you say, the roots around your home, that kind of thing. And that is all gone. That's all changed. the landscape is completely unrecognizable now. And within that, and it's interesting that you mentioned Fariner and the idea of potential retribution, because you've already alluded to this thing of mob culture and outbreaks and potential violence,

not necessarily towards Fariner in particular, but just in general, some looting, what's that looking like now that we have had daylight over this scene? So now that the fire has started to fizzle out, or at least it's not spreading to the same extent, people inevitably start to look for the scapegoats, the people to blame. And they become predictably xenophobic. So there's already in this moment a fear around foreigners and particularly Catholics, which is something we see right up to the glorious revolution, certainly, in 1688, just a few years later. French people and Catholics in particular seem to bear the brunt of the reprisals. Now, there's a quote here from William Taswell, who's the 14-year-old at Westminster School, who talks about an attack that he sees. And I want you to read it, but I want to remember the fact that he is 14 years old and he's witnessing the kind of violence that is now playing out on the streets as people start to point the finger of blame and much worse besides.

Okay, so he says, a blacksmith in my presence, meeting an innocent Frenchman walking along the street, felled him instantly to the ground with an iron bar. I could not help seeing the innocent blood. of this exotic flowing in a plentiful stream down to his ankles, spelled with a sea. This exotic, I mean, he's just from France, for God's sake, calm down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I get it. It's the 1660s.

But that's interesting. It's very violent, though, as well. I mean, someone's being killed in the street because he's French. This is a wild escalation of what's happening. And then it goes on to say, a report prevailed that 4,000 French and papists were in arms, okay, you get this a lot in the 17th century, intending to carry with them death and destruction and increase the conflagration, upon which every person, both in city and suburbs, having procured some sort of weapon or other, instantly almost collected themselves together

to oppose this chimerical army. I mean, that's the key isn't of this chimerical army. It's not existent. This is not happening. Exactly, yes. So it says so much, you know, we talked earlier about the kind of the way that news spreads and the way that everyone knew that it started putting laying the fire. I mean, and now, we're getting rumors spreading rather than fact. And people are saying, the French and the Catholics, and the French Catholics, importantly, have taken up arms. They're running around the streets. They're going to kill us all. So we need to defend ourselves from these bloody foreigners who have burned down our city. Yeah. I mean, this continues for another 20 years and beyond,

but it reaches, as you said, by 1688, we're in serious territory. But it's really interesting to see it here 20 years earlier. Yeah. And of course, by 1688, it's going to have huge ramifications in terms of how the nation is governed. It's going to literally de-thrown a king once again, not in the violent way that we saw with Charles I first. But, you know, this xenophobia, this kind of mob panic and the spreading of what is essentially fake news is going to continue for these years and get worse and worse. By the 6th of September, so, you know, we're quite a few days in now. The fire is largely dying out. Okay, so we've gone from the 2nd to the 6th. So this is four days of burning, but by the sixth, it's petering out.

Yes, although I will remind everyone that the final embers would only be put out in March of the following year. So this, yeah, yeah, this. March of 1667? Yes, yeah, yes. I don't like it. This burns for a really, really, really long time. So what I mean when we say it's largely dying is like it's not spreading anymore. It's still, stuff's still on fire, okay?

Like, it's still burning. In total, around 13,000 buildings are destroyed, including 86 churches, which, I mean, that's an almost unimaginable level of destruction. And again, thinking about those small pockets of communities and those parishes, 86 churches gone, plus all homes, livelihoods, etc. Of course, famously, St Paul's Cathedral is destroyed in its eldest form, or it's the form that it was in then, I suppose. I'm sure there's a much older one, don't call me. But, you know, the version that we see today is going to rise from the ashes. But I love this little detail about William Tasswell, who, you know, again. My God, William Tasso's your boyfriend. You love him so much. I mean, he's 14, so let's not go with that. Oh, okay.

He's not his boyfriend. William Tasol is your friend. I just think his account is so kind of soulful, and I just find the things that he observed so interesting. So he goes to St. Paul's, and he talks about how the ground there is so hot that his shoes are scorched. Wow. And we know from a previous episode that we've done on this that the lead in the windows

had melted and was sort of like molten and running in the cobbles. You know, it's quite a sense. sort of extreme thing to see. And, you know, St. Paul's is a vast landmark in the city. It's incredibly important. And for people who have strong religious belief in this moment to see a cathedral like that destroyed is really hard for us, I think, to access. That Tassel himself describes being overcome with a violent emotion. The other thing that he does, and I think this is so interesting, is he's looking around, you know, all this kind of molten metal and the walls that are crumbling. He almost gets crushed, by the way, by some of the falling masonry.

Right. So it's like, come on, William. Get indoors. Yeah, why has there no adult with you? Like, why have you just been allowed to leave school to go and see this? He says that before he leaves, he loads his pockets with several pieces of the metal from the bells. Oh. Because it's, I suppose it would have been valuable metal.

But also there's something so meaningful to him about that. And he does go on to be a clergyman eventually. I mean, no shocker there from everything we heard from me. Can I just ask, when did he write this? He's kind of middle age at this point. So, yeah, it's a sort of, you know, he's very much writing himself into the narrative. narrative and all of that. But I just think there's something so kind of cinematic about this young boy walking around the city in this moment. There is incredible destruction. To give you some more statistics, 100,000 people are made homeless. I mean, can you imagine that now? 100,000 people in London, suddenly, immediately, overnight, literally, made homeless, just milling around with their belongings in the city with nowhere to go. These are big households. These are families. These are families plus servants. And I always think about, you know, thinking about maybe someone, you know, we've heard about some servants in this story, the maid servant at Farroners who unfortunately we don't know of and she dies as the first victim, but also the maids are peeps and things like that.

You know, these people who live and work in the domestic homes of other people, do they stay with their masters or mistresses in this moment? Are they dismissed? Have they lost their jobs? Where do they go? Yeah, that's so interesting. Do people stay in their household units or not? Or go back to Bookinghamshire wherever, you know what I mean? If they have somebody back there. Do they have anywhere to go? Do they fall into a life of ruination? That strata of people are going to have to go somewhere because there's not that much food.

There's not a lot of provisions around the city at this moment. So going home might be, as in if it's beyond London, might well be an option for them. Yeah, so basically you are on your own in this moment. So the government does give out things like free firewood and some small amounts of money to people in these camps. I know, yeah. Do you really want to be? It's a bit on the nose. But of course there's no welfare system.

People aren't rehoused. They aren't looked after properly. There's no food banks or anything like that. There's no sort of concerted group effort to care for the displaced. So let's kind of look at the aftermath then. Where, because you know this is what people do, where does blame lie in the end? Okay. So we know that there's a man called Robert Hubert, who's a French Catholic, so he's taking a lawboxes.

He's a watchmaker. Now he arrives in London, and this is crucial, two days after the fire started, okay? Right. But he is taken up by the authorities and arrested, and he is tortured because people are pointing a finger at him. Why? Why is he identified? Because he's foreign. I don't think there's any other reason.

And he, under torture, he says that he threw a grenade into the window of the bakery on pudding lane. Because, of course, people, like, widely know that pudding lane is the start of it. And he says he did this because he's a spy for the Pope. But he does it under torture. There's also some historians who have kind of looked at, you know, possibly him being mentally ill in the first place, which would have made him stand out as well, possibly, you know, in this aftermath. So he's just an outsider in every way. He's taken up shamefully.

I mean, this is disgusting. So Thomas Fariner, the baker from Pudding Lane, whose house is the original sort of ground zero of this, he signs a bill accusing Hubert saying, yeah, yeah, this guy did throw a grenade through my window. That's insane. Because he's so worried about being blamed himself. He's like, yeah, this French Catholic guy did it.

Yeah, yeah, he absolutely did it. And poor old Robert on the 27th of October is executed for the crime of starting the fire He's executed in London. He wasn't even there. He wasn't even there. He wasn't even there. And he literally is executed at Tyburn. You know, and there's this kind of anti-Catholic feeling in the crowd as the, you know, sort of jeering at him watching him and be executed. And with his death also comes in a royal proclamation banning Catholic priests, which, you know, is incredibly significant, especially thinking forward to the glorious revolution and all those tensions. And, you know, this is really a building moment. And also, in the months afterwards, there's a plaque that's a plaque that's, It's hung in putting like, you know, what's left of it, that claims the fire was started by the barbarous papists. Wow. And that's just put up in public space to say, this happened. And within, you know, okay, it's a generation. Within 20 years, their king is going to be that same Duke of York who helped contain the fire is going to come to the throne.

So James converts to Catholicism officially, we know, by 1669. Yeah. And then he comes to the throne in 1685, and he is then a Catholic king in this Protestant land. And well, that's a terrible melting part of things, yes. But so interesting to see that on the ground in what, as you say, what's left of Pudding Lane in 1666-66. So that's a long time for this anti-Catholic rhetoric. And that people are making these explicit connections between this bad thing happened, and these are the people to blame.

This is the group, the minority group to blame. Wow. It's wild. It really is. The aftermath of the fire, we have a few choice words from peeps. He says it was a sad sight to see how the river looks, no houses, nor church near it. So again, just thinking about that cityscape, that skyline has completely changed.

The huge St. Paul's Cathedral is gone. In terms of familiarity with the city, where you to stand on South Bank, Southwark, for example, where Evelyn went, you would not recognise the city, you would not necessarily be able to locate things anymore or sort of find your way through. Evelyn himself says, I went again to the ruins for it was no longer a city. Wow.

So that's what people are seeing. That's what they're encountering. This levelling on so many different scales of levels. This is also then the beginning of, dare I say, modern London or that part of London starting to rise from the ashes of this. Parts of London that are still recognised, well, sure. So the most, it's kind of obvious and famous one, of course, is St. Paul's. Ironic.

I've never been in St. Paul's, I'm ashamed to say. I haven't been, I've lived in London for nearly, 20 years, nearly. Yeah. And I went in this year for the first time. Really? Worth it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's gorgeous. I've walked around the outside many times.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I went in Westminster Abbey for the first time the other days. I haven't ever been once or twice, yeah. Yeah, I felt like such a tourist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. No, it's incredible. And an amazing sort of history of England, walking around it and seeing all the tombs of various people.

But yeah, so. obviously the new St. Paul's is designed and built by Christopher Wren, who of course becomes one of the most, if not the defining architect of the late 17th century. You know, and really his aesthetic is so still part of modern London. What we understand. Absolutely. But beyond that, there's a sort of wider building program. And Evelyn, as the minor civic servant that he is, he is responsible for presenting a plant of the king of a sort of remodeled London. So this is, you From this disaster, just come opportunity. And I always wondered, thinking about Charles II, you know, the restoration and his kind of,

the earliest years of that with the plague and all this disaster and the fire and everything and all the sort of tumult of it, if this is not a sort of great moment for him to redesign everything and sort of start fresh and if that is exciting to him and reassuring to him in some way. I mean, it's obviously a huge challenge, but he gets a fresh start essentially to rewrite what's happened before. Just coming back to, before we finish up, St. Paul's, the last time I was in there, I was down in the crypt bit, which is open to everybody. And I think there is debris from the Great Fire there. I think you can see signs that were partially burnt or something, if I'm remembering correctly. So that's another really tangible on-site link to what happened in 1666. Yeah.

And anyone who's an archaeologist who's dug in London will know that there's a sort of an ash layer, isn't there? A sort of burnt layer that wherever you dig in the city. within where the fire happened that you will hit that layer and I just think that's again so tangible this kind of moment this disaster just

There's like a disaster movie in this that hasn't been made yet Are there any fire movies Like the Great Fire I mean Has it ever been adapted? Yeah there's but modern ones The one just came out recently because of the LA fires and stuff

No but like about the Great Fire Oh I don't think so No I don't think so We should make that We should Now listen we're going to wrap up But hark ye this is the episode in which I think I've just gotten a cold. Can you hear it?

I mean, don't breathe anyone. No, I know. I know. I'm, I know. I'm, but I'm just like, oh my God, I'm suddenly sneezing. My nose is itchy. Like, I was... This is because you've done the history hit Christmas party last night. Well, I mean, I did. But I thought my voice is just tired. But now I'm just like, oh, my God, maybe I'm getting a cold. I'm going to do. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. I really like the fire of London. Sometimes when I'm like, oh, Fire of London again, but actually, there's a lot in there. And from so many different perspectives, as I say, I love a history when you can recreate an event from all these different angles. Love. Yeah, you should write a book on the Far Island. I'd love to. Because there's quite a few. Settled. Oh, is there? Yeah, of course there is.

Yeah, of course there is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, are they any good? And on that, thank you so much for listening to and watching After Dark, depending if you're watching us on YouTube or if you're listening on the podcast platform. Thank you as ever. You know, we often say to you, leave us a five-star review and we really appreciate all of that kind of thing. But actually, it's time for us to say thank you for doing it. all your five-star reviews. That's what you're saying actually, just leave us a one-star review this time.

No, but like honestly, you guys have been amazing in helping to spread the word of After Dark. It's been incredible over the last couple of years. It sounds like we're going away. We're not. But I'm just saying, we don't need you to do anything this week because you've been so good at doing it for the last two years. But also, leave us a five-star review. She wants more. It's not an offer, Maddie. She wants more. Always. Thank you so much, and we shall see you next time.