Great Plague Mass Burial Pit, London, 1665
Entitled: "The Plague Pit Designed and Engraved by J. Franklin." A mass burial of plague victims is in progress under the cover of darkness; the bodies are being dumped from a two-wheeled cart into a large hole. Disposal of the bodies of those who died presented huge problems for the authorities, and eventually the normal patterns of burial and funerary observance broke down. The term is most often used to describe pits located in Great Britain, but can be applied to any place where Bubonic plague victims were buried. During the plague in London, burials of the dead took place outside of city walls. It was customary for such obsequies to be attended by armed law enforcement officials. The Great Plague (1665-66) was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the Kingdom of England (part of modern-day United Kingdom). The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people, about 15% of London's population. The 1664-66 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic but was caused by a particularly virulent strain of the disease; it was remembered afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400 year timespan of the Second Pandemic.
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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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