What is What was miasma theory??

The Plague of 1665 — GCSE History Revision

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The basics

Setting the Scene

📖 Setting the Scene

"Bring out your dead!" The cry echoed through London's streets as plague carts collected bodies each night. By September 1665, over 7,000 Londoners were dying every week. The Bills of Mortality (weekly official lists recording deaths in each London parish) made grim reading. Red crosses marked infected houses with "Lord have mercy upon us." The rich fled to the countryside. The poor were locked in their homes to die. Charles and his court moved to Oxford. When it was over, about 100,000 Londoners were dead — a quarter of the population. But was the government's response effective, or did it make things worse?

▶ The Great Plague of 1665 - History Matters (4 mins)

What was miasma theory?: The dominant 17th-century belief that plague was caused by 'bad air' (miasma) from rotting matter. Led to useless responses: bonfires to purify air, posies of flowers, fumigation. The theory was completely wrong — plague was bacterial, spread by fleas on rats.

Key terms

History glossary

What was miasma theory?: The dominant 17th-century belief that plague was caused by 'bad air' (miasma) from rotting matter. Led to useless responses: bonfires to purify air, posies of flowers, fumigation. The theory was completely wrong — plague was bacterial, spread by fleas on rats.

Exam tip

Earn the mark scheme marks

📝 Exam Technique: Historic Environment

If the Great Plague is your historic environment site, you need to know:

Location specifics: Outer parishes hit first and hardest — St Giles in the Fields, Whitechapel, Stepney. The wealthy City and West End suffered later. Poorest areas had worst overcrowding and sanitation.

Physical evidence: Plague pits (mass graves), surviving parish registers recording deaths, Bills of Mortality documents, remaining buildings from the period

Primary sources: Samuel Pepys's diary is the key source — he was present throughout, a government official, and wrote daily entries. Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) reconstructs the experience but is not a genuine contemporary diary.

Connection to broader themes: Shows limits of medical knowledge (miasma theory); shows social divisions (rich fled, poor died); shows government's limited capacity to respond

Now try it yourself

Quiz · Question 1 of 10

What bacterium caused the bubonic plague that devastated London in 1665?

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