The Great Fire of London: A Tragic Accident?

The Great Fire of London ran from 2nd-6th September 1666, taking with it 13,200 houses, 84 churches and 44 company halls, destroying an estimated 373 acres of the city. Though the fire itself officially claimed the lives of fewer than 10 people it left the city reeling and pulsing with fear, anger and desperation. London had seen a deal of hardship in past years, including the visitation of the Great Plague in 1665 which had claimed an estimated 100,000 of its people, and some believed the fire was a sign of the continuing judgement of God. The year 1666 had already begun with the sighting of fantastic comets in the sky, a sure omen of doom, and King Charles II's court had come under severe criticism for its frivolity and immoral ways. For the ordinary man it seemed that the devil walked in London streets, and to its citizens it appeared only a matter of time before their tension was justified by some new catastrophe.

The generally accepted version of events which led to the start of the Great Fire is that in the very early hours of September 2nd the king's baker Thomas Farrinor did not properly extinguish the oven in his shop on Pudding Lane, inadvertently starting a fire which would first engulf his own property and ultimately a large part of the city over the next 4 days. The danger of fire was of course not uncommon in London, what with the frequent use of both open flames and combustible materials in everyday life, but a combination of hot weather drying out the timbres and thatch of the narrowly packed houses and a prevailing wind blowing sparks to East and West meant that a strong conflagration was practically inevitable. Though the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was called to the scene, upon inspecting the burning bakery he famously remarked that 'A women could piss it out!' and refused to take measures to stop the fire from spreading. Whether he thought the fire too small or well under control is not clear, but it has been suggested that he did not implement such methods as tearing down buildings to halt the fire in Pudding Lane because he did not have the permission of the owners of the neighbouring properties and did not want to cause a legal fuss. If he had not decided to go home to bed things may have played out quite differently. The diarist Samuel Pepys, writing on September 7th, 1666, described the Lord Mayor in rather scathing terms, declaring that: "People do all the world over cry out of the simplicity of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him."

But was the Lord Mayor truly the man to blame? His weak-willed behavior aside, could a person who sees fire as a common occurrence be chastised for not immediately recognising the destructive potential of the blaze in Pudding Lane? Even Samuel Pepys, upon being shaken awake by a servant to view the fire from the window, went back to bed as soon as he saw it was far enough away not to pose an immediate threat. Or should the finger be pointed at the ill-fated baker, Thomas Farrinor? At the time of the Fire, traders of confectionery goods were well aware of the risks of working on streets like Pudding Lane. Some shops contained huge grates to roast 5 or 6 joints at a time, the flames licking up as high as the ceiling. There were ovens whose chimneys were sometimes built only of wattle and daub, a highly combustible material in comparison to the much safer option of stone. Accidents were frequent and seldom contained to one property. Like many before him, Farrinor was as much a victim of bad luck than he was of carelessness. The fact that the fire broke out in the early hours of a Sunday morning meant that most of the citizens of London were asleep, anticipating the day of rest before them and loathe to answer calls of help to extinguish the fire. Some may even have slept through the rising panic of those first few hours completely oblivious to how different the world would look in the morning light. This initial lack of urgency in itself probably contributed more than anything to the hold the fire took. But who did the citizens of London blame? Their neighbours? Their friends? Their King? According to a parliamentary inquiry enacted in the weeks after the fire many Londoners blamed a small yet influential group who had been a part of the city for time immemorial: Foreigners.

Channel 4 have recently put together a series entitled Bloody Foreigners in which they explore the role of foreigners in the pivotal moments of English history. One of the most illuminating episodes in the series is The Untold Story of the Great Fire of London in which they examine the immediate reactions of Londoners to the threat and devastation of the fire. Most believed that the fire was no mere accident, attributing the spread of the flames across the city to a conspiracy of arsonists intent upon London's destruction. Prior to the events of 1666, the city took a divided stance upon the immigrants in their midst. Some were grateful for their contribution to the workforce, especially those involved in the making and selling of luxury goods such as the confectioners, haberdashers and merchantmen who helped shape London's progressive economy. Others felt that these immigrants did not deserve to be naturalized, saying that they did not wish to abandon their foreign modes of dress, speech or religion and conform to English ways. The fact that a significant number of immigrants had created businesses and become wealthy members of society did not endear them to the more hostile of their neighbours. There were even those who saw them as spies, a notion which not only attached a stigma to London's immigrants but which added to the hysterical atmosphere of the Great Fire.

Formerly trusted members of communities found themselves hounded in the streets by mobs of ashen-faced, stricken citizens who were intent upon exacting revenge and catching the perpetrators of the fire. Violence was rife in the city and those especially targeted were the Dutch and the French. At the time of the fire, England was waging the Second Anglo-Dutch War over disputed trade routes. Not even a month prior to the fire the Royal Navy had attacked the Dutch island of Tershelling, sacking it of its wealth and committing atrocities against its inhabitants. In the ensuing panic of the fire it was only natural for the citizens to assume they were under attack from those Dutch wishing to get revenge. As for the French, they were the traditional enemies of the English and the current allies of the Dutch.

Mob violence and lynchings swept the city almost as fast as the flames. A Frenchman carrying a bag of tennis balls was viciously beaten and bludgeoned, his attackers taking the tennis balls as fireballs intended for acts of arson. Similarly, a Frenchwoman making her way to a refugee camp was set upon, beaten and had her breasts cut off because the crowd believed the baby chicks she carried in her apron were fire balls. A Dutch baker setting his oven alight was bombarded when his neighbours saw smoke coming from his chimney, leading to a confrontation that saw him beaten to within an inch of his life. A wealthy Dutch family seen packing up their belongings in a cart were hounded from the street, probably due to the presence of the cart itself which was a scarce commodity. The Dutchman in question had gone to great lengths to rent it when his family decided to flee the fire, paying a sum equivalent to £7000 in today's money. A Swedish nobleman visiting his mistress in the city centre was hung from a makeshift gallows and would have lost his life had it not been for the timely intervention of the Duke of York's lifeguards. In response to these and such other attacks on foreigners in the city, King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York went to great lengths to protect them. Not only did the Duke of York use his own personal lifeguards to patrol the streets, they intervened in the violence and brought the immigrants under royal protection. Some were taken to prisons and locked away merely to protect them, not necessarily because they had done anything wrong but because they feared for their safety. Foreigners were going into hiding, and understandably so.

Even the King's firework maker, Balland, came under the mob's suspicion as a Frenchman more than capable of starting the fire. Earlier that same week he had gone into the city to buy pasteboard, but upon being told that it would be some time before the amount desired could be obtained he announced that he needed it for the weekend. When asked why he explained that he was planning a display so spectacular it would light up St Paul's cathedral. Of course, St Paul's was lit up on the weekend, but not by fireworks. The cathedral was destroyed in the fire, and left Belland a prime suspect. Charles took the firework maker and his son into the protection of the royal court, much to the displeasure and mistrust of the Londoners baying for the man's blood.

And then there were the obvious national targets for the mob's rage: Papists. Indeed, right up until the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829 and the emancipation of Catholics in the UK, the inscription written upon the east side of The Monument to the Great Fire of London included the words: Here by permission of heaven, hell broke loose upon this Protestant city.....the most dreadful Burning of this City; begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the Popish faction...Popish frenzy which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched...

It was not until the capture of one Robert Hubert that the crazed Londoners found any relief or justification for their malice. He was a French watchmaker who had been arrested in Essex under suspicion of trying to escape from his crimes in London. Under closer examination he readily confessed to having started the fire in Pudding Lane and other subsequent fires throughout the city with the help of numerous accomplices, though his story changed frequently. Ill-at-ease with his prisoner's testimony, the examining magistrate took him back to the scene of the crime and asked him to point out exactly where he had started the fire and how he had done it. No amount of placation or misdirection on the part of the magistrate would induce him to change his story, and Robert Hubert was tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced to death. It would of course be remiss not to mention that many aspects of his confession were extremely shaky and that the trial was naturally bias, with conflicting evidence and testimonies. It was not until after his death that it emerged that he had not even been in London until 2 days after the fire had started, proving him innocent. Though his motives for confessing to something he clearly did not do will never be fully understood, his role of scapegoat was of great satisfaction to the people of London. After his hanging at Tyburn his body was viciously ripped limb-from-limb by a crowd of angry Londoners as is was being handed over to the Company of Barber Surgeons.

The fire finally abated on Wednesday 5th and the 100,000 people who had been left homeless came from their places of refuge to examine the damage. Though some small fires still burned in separate parts of the city into the following day, the Great Fire was over. Those foreigners of a mind to return found their homes and businesses mostly destroyed, sometimes not by the ravages of the fire but by the rage of their neighbours, their property and goods pillaged. Some stories circulated of immigrants who had become local heroes in their communities for returning during the fire and pulling their houses down in an attempt to form fire-breaks, despite the hostility they suffered. In the main, however, they remained untrusted even in the aftermath of Robert Hubert's capture and demise.

In 1667, the fire was officially attributed to '...the hand of God, a great wind and a very dry season...'. Whether London's inhabitants truly believed this to be the case, remains to be seen.

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See: 'By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London' by Adrian Tinniswood