00:00:00.000Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns. That instinct to trade
00:00:06.120didn't disappear. It just grew up. With no minimums, no monthly fees, and a hundred free
00:00:11.240trades, TD Easy Trade taps into that instinct. Because you are made to trade, and TD Easy Trade
00:00:17.400is made to help. Hello and welcome to a super special pandemic episode of the Vulgar History
00:00:23.620podcast. Now the regular episodes of Vulgar History are a feminist women's history comedy1.00
00:00:28.940podcast and these pandemic specials are looking specifically at uh interesting weird um sad just
00:00:38.820in just interesting stories of pandemics that humanity has faced before and in my search for
00:00:46.220some interesting stories to share with you i asked on my instagram stories and i got a great
00:00:50.900suggestion from one of my followers whose name is this cat lady life thank you so much which is to
00:00:57.380look at a village called Eam and what happened there in 1666 during the Great Plague. And so
00:01:05.120the village, the name of it, it's spelled E-Y-A-M. And as per their own website for this village,
00:01:12.880it's pronounced Eam, like E-E-M. So I'm hopefully pronouncing it properly. And Eam is a village in
00:01:19.200Derbyshire, which I also looked up how to pronounce that, that part of England, which,
00:01:23.900fun fact is part of where the mercians mercians lived if you listen to my the podcast about
00:01:32.280ethelflaed queen of the mercians so this is sort of that part of what she oversaw back in the day
00:01:37.700but this is centuries after her we're looking at the year 1666 and the great plague so just for a
00:01:45.500point of clarification because i didn't realize this myself until i started reading up on pandemics
00:01:50.820so the black death is um possibly the most famous plague that britain and other parts of europe
00:01:58.760suffered and that was in like the 14th century ish was when it happened if you listen to the
00:02:04.700joan of england pandemic super special that's the the wave of things that she was going through0.79
00:02:10.160the great plague was when the bubonic plague reared its gross head again um between 1665 and 1666
00:02:19.000so there were two waves like 300 years apart of the same sort of thing um so the black death
00:02:28.680was kind of all over europe everywhere the great plague was largely a localized outbreak
00:02:33.760within great britain and focused mostly around london as well as a couple of regional outbreaks
00:02:39.580in york and derbyshire and that's what we're going to be talking about um and just so you
00:02:45.160know as well so the great plague itself um it is a threat to london came to an end after just one
00:02:51.420year partially because there was the great fire of london happened which killed a lot of people
00:02:57.880and burned down a lot of infrastructure and then there was a particularly cold autumn and winter
00:03:02.060which contributed to the disease dying out because it was transmitted by fleas and i guess fleas don't
00:03:08.540like massive fires followed by cold temperatures but what we're looking at is the part of what i
00:03:14.540just read to you and that's from teachithistory.co.uk where i looked up to see the difference
00:03:20.060between the black death and the great plague but derbyshire so it was in london but it also got to
00:03:26.340a couple of little smaller locations including the village of eam so the great plague intermittently
00:03:33.160reared its head around europe between the 13th and 17th centuries killing an estimated 150 million
00:03:38.780people. The epidemic of 1665 to 1666 was particularly notorious and the last major
00:03:44.780outbreak of the disease in England. Around 100,000 people, one quarter of London's population
00:03:50.780died during this one year period. I want to mention as well the sources I used for this.
00:03:56.760So I found an article from bbc.com by Eleanor Ross, an article from interestingengineering.com
00:04:03.860by duria ozdemir another article from bbc news by david mckenna wikipedia and also atlas obscura
00:04:12.200has a an article about this and i'll put all the links to that in the show notes so this is a
00:04:16.620compilation of facts i learned from various different places and it was every every source
00:04:21.660i looked at had a couple more interesting details and backed up and clarified some other things so
00:04:25.740it's it was an interesting thing to research so it's 1665 and so the the great plague is happening
00:04:33.520in london this super squishy town where everybody's living really close to each other and it reached
00:04:38.500this tiny village of eam in the summer of 1665 when so a london merchant sent flea infested
00:04:45.740cloth samples to the local tailor alexander hadfield because they were preparing for
00:04:50.080this celebration that they have in eam called um wakes week just one sec so wakes week at the end
00:04:57.840of august starts with the blessing of the wells and includes a lot of activities during the week
00:05:01.700so it's just this sort of festival that's coming up and so this guy um Alexander Hadfield wanted
00:05:07.800to get some nice new fabrics to make some nice new outfits for people for wakes week but um the
00:05:13.340fabric samples came from London where the the plague had kind of just started remember it's
00:05:18.240carried in fleas so what happened is that George Vickers who is the assistant of the tailor he got
00:05:25.640the fabric samples and he's like oh these are sort of like little dusty little smelly he hung them up
00:05:30.180um to dry and then that released these fleas these plague fleas and so within a week george
00:05:36.740vickers the assistant had died a an agonizing death of the plague before long the rest of the
00:05:42.620household had fallen ill and died so that was in that summer of 1665 after vickers death uh
00:05:50.380the disease just spread throughout the whole community so that was in august and then by
00:05:55.780december 42 villagers would also have died there's a brief intermission where the rate of infections
00:06:02.580dropped and everyone is like oh my god okay that's you know great this is good because
00:06:06.300bear in mind so eam at this point had something it had less than 400 villagers just one sec
00:06:12.140um it was a little teeny tiny village anyway we'll get to the numbers later but there's something
00:06:18.160like oh yeah so there's 344 people in the village and 42 people died over those four months between
00:06:25.460august and december so that's horrible everyone's freaking out obviously um but then things took a
00:06:33.400turn for the worse so the plague made a blistering return it mutated and became pneumonic which means
00:06:40.480that instead of it just being transmitted by fleas and now humans could transmit it to one
00:06:45.280another directly instead of being infected by fleas alone so this is like the next the next
00:06:51.680summer effectively so it started in sort of the summer of 1665 and it's by the summer of 1666
00:06:58.900where things were just getting horrible again so as a disease spread the villagers obviously
00:07:05.860wanted to flee because they what everybody kind of like instinctively knew and still kind of know
00:07:12.300it's like when someone's really sick when like everyone is really sick around you you just want
00:07:16.640to maybe stay away from them because you could even if you don't understand how germs work what
00:07:21.260contagion means like you just kind of get the sense of like well everyone around here seems
00:07:24.500to be dying so i'm just gonna like not be here so the villagers wanted to flee but their newly
00:07:30.480appointed rector william mompesson had a different idea because so he suspected that if they fled from
00:07:38.360eam they would transmit the outbreaks to other nearby cities and make it make it even worse for
00:07:44.580everybody in all of all of england all of the united kingdom if the villagers went to another
00:07:49.680a town and then went to another town like it would just spread and be even more horrible for
00:07:53.540everybody so he was a man of a puritan religion was he no no he was not puritan but he was very
00:08:01.020um religious and he thought the rightful course of action was to self-quarantine the town to leave
00:08:05.820them all there so they couldn't infect anybody else but um that's a tough sell to a town to tell
00:08:12.980them like hey why don't we all just stay here all die to help the rest of the united kingdom
00:08:18.820so not a really easy thing for him to convince the town especially because no one liked him
00:08:24.120so he is unpopular with the villagers because he'd been sent to eam in 1664 to replace the
00:08:29.960previous rector thomas stanley and thomas stanley is the one who was a puritan so stanley had
00:08:35.740refused to acknowledge the 1662 act of uniformity which made it compulsory to use the book of common
00:08:41.720prayer introduced by charles ii in religious services um stanley along with most of the
00:08:47.720people of eam have been supporters of oliver cromwell and the puritan government and so
00:08:52.780once charles ii came back for the restoration eam slash thomas stanley we're not into that
00:08:58.100and then so the officials removed him brought in mom passan to take over but what was his name
00:09:05.200william mom passan so he really felt like this is what they had to do they had to self-quarantine
00:09:10.620the town he knew that he couldn't convince them to do it so he reached out to thomas stanley who
00:09:14.760he had replaced in the hope that they could team up and that stanley who was still popular with the
00:09:18.660town could help him convince them to do this so thomas stanley was living in exile on the outskirts
00:09:25.200of the village because he had been basically kicked out um and they agreed to meet and came
00:09:30.420up with a plan so on june 24th 1666 william mompesson assisted by thomas stanley told the
00:09:37.840parishioners that the village must be enclosed with no one allowed in or out he had they had
00:09:42.780it all planned out so the earl of devonshire who lived nearby had offered to send food and supplies
00:09:48.140if the villagers agreed to be quarantined he said that if they agreed to stay effectively choosing
00:09:53.960death like for them to all sacrifice themselves to die he um mompesson would do everything in
00:10:00.680his power to alleviate the suffering and remain with them telling them he was willing to sacrifice
00:10:04.980his own life rather than see nearby communities destroyed by this plague his wife Catherine who
00:10:11.680is 27 years old recorded in her diary quote it might be difficult to predict the outcome because
00:10:17.200of the resentment as to William's role in the parish but considering that Reverend Stanley
00:10:21.160was now stood by his side perhaps he would gain the support necessary to carry out the day
00:10:25.220so during the meeting she wrote there were many misgivings over the wisdom of this plan
00:10:29.780obviously because the plan is like let's just all stay here quarantine in a village together
00:10:34.160and all die so that the plague we have doesn't spread to anyone else but with the help of thomas
00:10:41.720stanley who's still really popular and the the whole community is sort of deeply held puritan
00:10:46.320spiritual beliefs um that you know with the strong faith in you know concept of heaven and hell and
00:10:53.700doing the right thing they reluctantly agreed to the plan and so quarantine began so it was
00:11:01.500organized like this rocks were placed in a one mile circle around eam to create sort of a boundary
00:11:07.200of where they could stay like how far they could go this would be their isolation zone
00:11:12.700so in order to pay for supplies the villagers would soak their coins in vinegar which they felt
00:11:20.200would um disinfect them from the plague and maybe i don't know vinegar it's a good strong thing
00:11:25.580maybe it did whatever so they would soak coins in vinegar and then take them out to these rocks
00:11:30.240which had been put around to sort of mark the the perimeter and the rocks they had sort of drilled
00:11:36.240holes in them so they would put the coins in the holes in the rocks and then merchants from
00:11:40.360surrounding villages would come by take the coins out of the holes in the rocks and leave bundles
00:11:45.140of meat grains etc in return for what they had bought you can still visit these stones today
00:11:50.760actually they're now a tourist attraction and people still put coins inside the holes to sort
00:11:58.120of honor the plague victims so and against what one might assume it seems that eames townsfolk
00:12:05.900they stoically accepted this and made a pact with god to remain although part of that could be
00:12:13.100because if they tried to leave they weren't really welcome anywhere else for instance one woman left
00:12:17.980eam to travel to a nearby market five miles away when people realized where she was from
00:12:22.600they threw food at her and shouted the plague the plague so it was kind of known what was going on
00:12:29.620in eam so more people died um and the village began to collapse like the entire infrastructure
00:12:36.280and economy of it roads were left to crumble untended gardens became overgrown crops were
00:12:41.240left unpicked in fields leaving villagers to rely on these food packages from neighboring towns
00:12:45.560uh so church services were held in the open air to reduce the spread of disease
00:12:50.860but by august and remember they started their quarantine in june uh the effects of the plague
00:12:56.360were such that 267 people had died out of a population of 344 so that's mostly almost
00:13:05.680everybody so those who didn't catch it probably had a chromosome or some sort of natural immunity
00:13:10.980to the disease which stopped them from falling ill but people obviously tried to think about
00:13:15.520like well why is it why do some people die and some people don't so they did things like
00:13:19.940superstitious rituals such as smoking tobacco and fervent prayer um so apparently
00:13:27.180plague victims knew they had been struck by the pox when they began to smell sweet odors
00:13:32.960so the pleasant scent was brought on by a person's olfactory glands detecting that their
00:13:38.000internal organs were collapsing and rotting so this coupled with the fact that diseases were
00:13:43.300thought to be carried through the air led to the villagers doing things like wearing masks
00:13:47.640stuffed stuffed with herbs some even sat in sewers because they thought that smell is so bad the
00:13:52.240plague couldn't get you there so the whole thing about um smelling um so mom was on his wife
00:13:59.780catherine whose diary we have some of these records for so he went for a walk in the nearby hills with
00:14:05.720his wife and she spoke about the sweet smell in the air and then died the following morning age
00:14:09.76027 um and his letters mom was on described the smell of sadness and death in the air so everything
00:14:16.500was just like beyond horrific so the stonemason died meaning that villagers had no choice but to
00:14:21.620engrave their own tombstones and bury their own dead so people would drag bodies down the street
00:14:27.460by tying ropes around the victim's feet to avoid contact with the actual dead body entire families
00:14:33.300died one after another the plague was at its peak this month so august 1666 where five to six people
00:14:40.240would die per day and this was partially also because this was a hot summer meaning the fleas
00:14:45.660were especially active so it was passing human human contact but it was also passing through
00:14:50.480the fleas as well um a woman named elizabeth hancock who was a survivor of this whole situation0.72
00:14:59.520she buried six of her children and her husband one after another eight days in a row she had to
00:15:05.960drag their bodies across the fields and bury them while people from the nearby village of
00:15:10.560stony middleton stood on the hill and watched her too scared to help the small graveyard where she
00:15:15.340buried her family members is now a national trust monument known as riley graves there is another
00:15:21.420plague survivor also forced to bury his own family named marshall howe so he was tasked with a job of
00:15:29.180burying people after the grave diggers had all died i guess and he had been infected during the early
00:15:34.240stages of the outbreak but survived and he believed that he couldn't be infected twice so he enjoyed
00:15:39.160his job apparently um partially because he would help himself to the victim's possessions as his
00:15:45.460rewards he just steal stuff from their body as he buried them however um his son his two-year-old
00:15:53.340son william and his wife joan both died of the plague potentially because they were infected
00:15:58.240through the items he stole from the dead or just because he was handling all the bodies all the
00:16:01.900time um so after the summer's end the worst of it would cease because i think it sounds like
00:16:10.680everybody who was immune to it was okay and everyone who was susceptible to it had died
00:16:16.800the number of cases fell in september and the last death from from this great plague in eam
00:16:22.680occurred on november 1st 1666 and when farm worker abraham morton died so november the disease was
00:16:31.240gone it had been 14 months running through the the whole town and only 83 people were left alive
00:16:38.680out of the previous town's population of 344 and with further transmission prevented they had what
00:16:45.800they had hoped to do had in fact transpired they prevented the disease from spreading to other
00:16:50.440nearby towns and then the great fire of london the cold winter and the great plague ended in
00:16:56.620the united kingdom so william mompesson now widowed he left eam in 1669 to work in another
00:17:04.360village but his the reputation like people knew he had been in the plague village so they just
00:17:10.400kind of didn't want to be around him he was forced to live in a hut outside the city until the
00:17:15.780residents fears had abated and they could they were brave enough to be near him again uh life
00:17:21.560returned to normal in Eme as much as it can when like whatever 80% of your entire tiny town
00:17:29.400populations all died but trade resumed relatively quickly partially because of there was lead mining
00:17:35.460there and that's kind of why the town had been created in the first place back in like back in
00:17:40.520the day like Ethelflaed Queen of the Mercia's day um it had been a town used for mining during the
00:17:47.340roman occupation as well so it's the natural resources i guess um so the lead mining was
00:17:53.040too valuable to ignore so the town kind of got back on its feet every year on plague sunday
00:17:58.940so the last sunday in august a memorial service is held in the nearby hollow of cucklet delf
00:18:05.140which is the site of the outdoor services held by reverend mompesson during the plague years
00:18:09.780and the town has um a plague village museum it's still a really small town i believe there's less
00:18:17.440than a thousand people living there still but this is very much their claim to fame and i think
00:18:22.380as well should it be they did this very brave very noble sacrifice um to protect themselves
00:18:31.840and it really seemed like it it really helped the whole situation as well it helped a great
00:18:37.460plague from getting worse in all the nearby villages and it's a horrifying story and i'd
00:18:43.640never heard of this before and when i went to research it actually there's a couple of other
00:18:49.100recent articles have popped up because of the current pandemic that's going on people thinking
00:18:54.600about quarantine and stuff so thank you to this cat lady life on instagram for uh the suggestion
00:19:00.840of this story and this is the vulgar history podcast pandemic special i hope you're all
00:19:06.940keeping well um i'm glad that the current sort of quarantine that we're all on now is not we're all
00:19:16.400just staying in our houses to die but we are doing it to help each other out in a very sort of
00:19:23.100community oriented way so the opposite of what happened in eam um we're all keeping to ourselves
00:19:29.560trying to keep everybody safe in sort of a global international scale anyway um i hope if you're the
00:19:35.700sort of person who likes listening to plague stories this is interesting to you i have some
00:19:40.200more pandemic specials coming up later on a regular episode will be coming out on wednesday
00:19:46.260as per usual and i'll talk to you all next time okay take care bye want to talk etfs with the
00:19:52.740people behind them join me etienne jean cabouchard on the upside ticker talk we dive into what's
00:19:58.300moving markets with timely analysis trends and answers to etf questions you've actually been
00:20:04.060thinking about hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your etf investing iq the war
00:20:11.200is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the
00:20:18.920dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying the darkness chooses someone
00:20:26.100else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old school adventuring and
00:20:33.720it's most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies something else rises to
00:20:40.040finish the job this is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically
00:20:45.800based on the decisions that the characters make this is what it felt like to play rpgs in the
00:20:50.42080s and man it is so good to be back join the glass cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow
00:20:55.840dark every thursday night at 8 p.m eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the
00:21:01.060podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:21:10.560For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again. How did this
00:21:16.480happen? My name's Mandy. And I'm Melissa. And we're the hosts of Moms and Mysteries,
00:21:21.100the true crime podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're two Florida moms who are
00:21:25.820obsessed with mysteries. Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories.
00:21:30.400We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony to the bizarre and complex crimes right here in our home state, like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell.
00:21:40.880We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width, you'd only get from two friends who have been hooked on mysteries since childhood.
00:21:46.760Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday and Thursday.
00:21:50.400Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.