Fatality and Gender in the Great London Plague of 1665

Abstract

The bubonic plague was the most devastating biological incident in late medieval and early modern Europe. The first major attack, known as the "Black Death," struck communities throughout Western Europe in the mid-14th century and resulted in tens of millions of fatalities. The last major outbreak in Europe was the "Great London Plague" of 1665 which killed an estimated 75,000-100,000 people. This project attempted to contribute to our understanding of the Great London Plague by focusing on some of the most interesting--but still unexplained--demographic features of plague outbreaks in Tudor-Stuart England, specifically the disparities in gender.