September 02, 2009
London Burning I (1666)
If there is the "great man of history" theory, is there also a "great idiot" theory?If so, then a special place should be set at the table for Sir Thomas Bloodworth, the Lord Mayor of London who single-handedly turned the error of a baker who did not bank his fires properly into the Great Fire of London.
But first, a little background. London in 1666 resembled a medieval city that outgrew its boundaries. Its 80,000 souls lived in mostly wooden buildings and traveled its narrow and twisting streets. As the kingdom's largest manufacturing center and port, its warehouses crammed with combustible materials such as rope, tar, paper, lumber, and rosen, existed cheek by jowl with blacksmiths, foundaries, glaziers, all capable of sending up sparks to set them ablaze. The last time the city burned was in 1632.
Not surprisingly, fire was a common hazard. Making it worse was the traditional London practice of cantilevering the upper floors of buildings into the streets. Every available space was utilized, to the point where alleys were blocked from the sun by the buildings meeting overhead. Attempts by King Charles II to forbid the practice were ignored, and the king — mindful that independent-minded London supported Cromwell against his father, Charles I (who was deposed and executed) — was wary of pressing the matter further.
As for firefighting services, that was left up to the homeowners in each community, on the principle that they would be most motivated to put out the flames. Parish churches, by law, had to contain firefighting tools, such as ladders, pubckets, axes and hooks mounted on poles, used to pull down burning buildings.
For awhile, that was sufficient. But not on this day. London was in a drought this summer, and the city was tinder-dry. Sometime after midnight, in the bakery of Thomas Farriner of Pudding Lane, fire broke out. The family escaped by climbing across the upper story to the house next door and roused the neighbors. The parish constables showed up an hour later and decided that the bakery house couldn't be saved. The houses next door needed to pulled down. The homeowners complained.
Enter the Lord Mayor. Little is known about Mr. Bloodworth, except that he was a wealthy merchant who supported Charles' restoration to the throne and was rewarded with high office. When asked what to do, he responded, "Pish! A woman could piss it out," and went home. It was the decision of a moment, but in that moment, London was doomed.
The diarist, Samuel Pepys, picks up the story:
[September] 2nd (Lord's day). Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today, Jane [the maid] called us up, about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose, and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window and thought it to be on the backside of Markelane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again and to sleep.To be continued ....
About 7 rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window and saw the fire not so much as it was and further off. So to my closet [office] to set things to rights after yesterday's cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places ... and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge; which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah on the bridge.
So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's baker's' house in Pudding-lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus's Church and most part of Fish-street already. So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down.
Born: William Somerville, poet, Colwich, Staffordshire, 1675; Giovannia Verga, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, Catania, Sicily, 1840; Eugene Field, poet, journalist, St. Louis, Mo., 1850; Joseph Roth, novelist, journalist, Brody, Ukraine, 1894; Cleveland Amory, journalist, novelist, animal activist, Nahant, Mass., 1917; Allen Drury, novelist, Houston, Texas, 1918.
Died: J(ohn) (Ronald) R(euel) Tolkien, novelist, linguist, Bournemouth, Hampshire, 1973; Allen Drury, novelist, San Francisco, 1998.
Also from the Reader's Almanac:
- Man Falls Twice: Milton & Darwin
- Charles Sedley's frolic (1663)
- Francoise Villon arrested for murder (1455)
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