Most people think that the Great Fire of London of 1666, at the time the greatest blaze ever to hit a city since Roman times, was started accidentally by Thomas Farriner at his bakery in Pudding Lane.
But many Londoners at the time thought otherwise, as is shown in a new Channel 4 documentary.
At the time Britain was at war with two neighbours - Holland and, as ever, France. Just weeks before the Great Fire, the Royal Navy sailed into the Dutch city of West Terschelling and set fire to it.
So it was no surprise that when the Great Fire broke out, many Londoners thought that either the Dutch, in revenge for West Terschelling, or the French, or possibly both, were to blame.
As a result, lynch mobs prowled the city as the fire raged, attacking any foreigner they came across, even if they were neither French nor Dutch.
A Frenchwoman trying to escape to a refugee camp in Spitalfields was attacked by the mob as they thought that the baby chicks she was carrying in her apron were firebombs. She had her breasts cut off. A Swedish diplomat was lynched.
Not surprisingly, Catholics were also blamed.
The fire spread rapidly throughout the city due to the huge number of timber houses and other buildings. When the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who had earlier been summoned to provide leadership arrived, he dismayed the parish officials by refusing to sanction the demolition of the surrounding properties. This was the accepted firefighting method of the day, used to create fire breaks, and therefore isolating the blaze and enabling it to be more effectively brought under control.
With the fire spreading and moving closer to the Thames, on the shores of which stood timber constructed warehouses, layed out end to end, each containing every conceivable flammable substance possibly known to man, Bloodworth stood resolute.
With experienced men screaming for permission to start demolishing,he would not give one inch. His response to every plea made was "Pish! A woman could piss it out ".
Samuel Pepys made an entry in his diary on 7th September 1666: "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."
James, Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II and the future King James II, also helped to fight the fire, summoning militias from neighbouring counties. He also rescued foreigners from the mob, often having to cut them down after being hanged.
Helping fuel the belief that the fire was started deliberately was that rather than the fire merely spreading, moving along from one building to the next, was that fires sprang up in several different places, often a fair distance away from another fire.
Eventually, those who believed that the fire was deliberately stared by a foreign power appeared to be vindicated when Thomas Hubert, a French watchmaker, confessed to starting the fire and was hanged at Tyburn.
In 1677 a Nelson's Column-like monument to the Great Fire, built by Sir Christopher Wren, was unveiled in the City of London. On top is a great golden "flame". Three sides of the base carry Latin inscriptions. The one on the east side generally blames Catholics for starting the fire, although most of that was chiselled out in 1831. The monument still stands.
The untold story of the Great Fire of London
By Tom Geoghegan
BBC News Magazine
Wednesday 30th June 2010
The Great Fire of London started accidentally in a bakery, right? That wasn't the view at the time - many believed it was a terrorist attack and violent reprisals against possible suspects soon followed. The date 1666 - like 1066 and 1966 - is one burned on to the collective memory of a nation.
Everyone learns at school that the fire raging for four days in that hot, dry summer began in a bakery in Pudding Lane.
But a new Channel 4 documentary focuses on the lesser known story of the fire - it sparked a violent backlash against London's immigrant population, prompted by the widely-held belief at the time that it was an act of arson committed by a foreign power.
In the days and weeks following the fire, ordinary Londoners - many of whom were displaced and homeless - gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry swiftly launched to find out what happened.
GREAT FIRE IN NUMBERS...
Destroyed 373 acres of the City
13,200 houses, 84 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, and 44 company halls burned down
Raged from Sunday 2 Sept to Thursday 6 Sept 1666
Miraculously, just 10 people thought to have died, although some perished in refugee camps
Rebuilding killed more people than the fire itself
All those witness statements can be found in the inquiry's report, a 50-page document held in the capital's Guildhall.
It suggests the city on the eve of the fire was one fraught with anxiety and paranoia, says Sue Horth, the documentary's executive producer, and the finger of blame was pointed at two countries with which England was at war, Netherlands and France.
"We teach people about Pudding Lane and the hot summer but we don't say that weeks before the Great Fire, the British Navy sailed into the city of West Terschelling in the Netherlands and set fire to it in an act of diplomatic piracy.
... AND IN QUOTES
'Among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down'
Samuel Pepys, 2 Sept 1666
'God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it'
John Evelyn, 2 Sept 1666
'Pish! A woman could piss it out'
London's Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth.
"London was expecting an act of reprisal against the city. It was expecting something bad to happen, not because it was superstitious or frightened, but because the government had done something bad. So when the fire happened, it was a natural and quite sensible suspicion for the people of London to have."
As the fire raged, and rumours spread that the French had invaded, angry mobs hunted anyone who appeared to be foreign, says Ms Horth. A Swedish diplomat was lynched. A French woman trying to escape to a refugee camp in Spitalfields had her breast cut off because people thought the baby chicks she carried in her apron were fireballs.
"London was a city turned to constant night, with the ash cloud and smoke, and the sun couldn't penetrate, so it was a frightening place to be. Thousands of buildings were razed. People either tried to escape or they fought the fire or they tried to find those responsible."
This violence is the untold story of the fire, says Adrian Tinniswood, author of By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London.
The fire burned for four days
Most people thought it was an attack by the Dutch, because of the recent atrocity by the Royal Navy under Admiral Robert Holmes.
The first victim of the Great Fire was the maidservant at Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane. The fire broke out just after midnight on Sunday 2nd September, trapping Thomas Farriner's family upstairs. They all eventually managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except the maidservant who was too frightened to try. She perished in the flames.
"There was cheering in the streets of London when that happened, so when the fire started, people thought it was the Dutch getting their own back.
"In fact, the fire was caused by a gale blowing across London for four days. It hit London in the early hours of Sunday morning, just as [Thomas] Farriner's bakery goes up in flames. The gale blew embers and bits of straw across the city and fires broke out all over the place, so people said: 'This isn't a fire spreading, it has to be arson'."
On the fourth day, when the fire was finally quelled, King Charles II, the newly restored monarch after years of civil war, tried to calm matters by going to a new camp of 100,000 homeless, and declaring the fire was an act of God.
Shaky confession
The king took a very enlightened view and always believed it was an accident, says Mr Tinniswood. His brother, James, Duke of York, went even further. He rode into the city with his bodyguards and rescued people from the mob, some of whom were in the very act of being hanged on street corners.
Hubert, in a detail of a wider picture of Catholic conspirators from 1667, about to be hanged on Tyburn's "Triple Tree" gallows
The hunt for a foreign scapegoat continued, until one volunteered for the role. At the end of September, the parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the fire, and a French Protestant watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confessed to having deliberately started the fire at the bakery with 23 conspirators.
Ludgate on flames, with St Paul's Cathedral, which perished in the fire, in the background
Although his confession seemed to change and flounder under scrutiny, he was tried and hanged. Afterwards, colleagues told the inquiry Hubert had been at sea with them at the time, and the inquiry concluded the fire had indeed been an accident.
To this day, no-one knows why he confessed.
Pudding Lane today, where the Great Fire started in Thomas Farriner's bakery
Until the 19th Century, the plaque at London's Monument stated that followers of the Pope were to blame, says Ms Horth, and named Hubert as the fire-starter. It was only after Catholic emancipation in the 1820s that the government decided the plaque was inflammatory and had those inscriptions removed.
"This story [about it being an accident] is not necessarily the most helpful for us all to believe," Ms Horth says. "The truth is that we will never know how it began. We now believe it was an accident but 350 years ago certain people thought differently. There are many perspectives to events and it's up to us to understand them all."
It's natural the version of events told to youngsters should airbrush the gruesome details, says Meriel Jeater, curator at the Museum of London.
Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul's after the fire
"The traditional view taught in schools is that it all happened as a happily-ever-after sort of story. It was a terrible disaster, but not many people died, we rebuilt the city in brick so it was fireproof, and isn't St Paul's pretty?
"But the more you investigate, you realise it wasn't all like that. The dark side was that the fire burst on to the surface religious tension and paranoia about national security."
The Great Fire of London Monument stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill in the City of London. It was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London and to celebrate the rebuilding of the City. It is topped with a golden urn of fire. Three sides of the base of the monument carry inscriptions in Latin. The one on the south side describes actions taken by Charles II following the fire. The one on the east describes how the monument was started and brought to perfection, and under which mayors. The one on the north describes how the fire started, how much damage it caused, and how the fire was extinguished. In 1681 the words "but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched" were added to the end of the inscription. The inscription on the east generally blames Roman Catholics for the fire. The words were chiselled out in 1831. A cage was added in the mid-19th century at the top of the Monument to prevent people jumping off, after six people had committed suicide between 1788 and 1842.
It's a tale with echoes today, says Ms Jeater. "When I was curating the exhibition, it wasn't long after the 7/7 bombings and when I was reading about the reactions against Catholics and the Dutch, it struck me that there were a lot of similarities with the backlash against Muslim people after the bombing. A lot of suspicion about people living in London.
"It's different people and different events, but I think human nature is very similar."
BBC News - The untold story of the Great Fire of London
But many Londoners at the time thought otherwise, as is shown in a new Channel 4 documentary.
At the time Britain was at war with two neighbours - Holland and, as ever, France. Just weeks before the Great Fire, the Royal Navy sailed into the Dutch city of West Terschelling and set fire to it.
So it was no surprise that when the Great Fire broke out, many Londoners thought that either the Dutch, in revenge for West Terschelling, or the French, or possibly both, were to blame.
As a result, lynch mobs prowled the city as the fire raged, attacking any foreigner they came across, even if they were neither French nor Dutch.
A Frenchwoman trying to escape to a refugee camp in Spitalfields was attacked by the mob as they thought that the baby chicks she was carrying in her apron were firebombs. She had her breasts cut off. A Swedish diplomat was lynched.
Not surprisingly, Catholics were also blamed.
The fire spread rapidly throughout the city due to the huge number of timber houses and other buildings. When the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who had earlier been summoned to provide leadership arrived, he dismayed the parish officials by refusing to sanction the demolition of the surrounding properties. This was the accepted firefighting method of the day, used to create fire breaks, and therefore isolating the blaze and enabling it to be more effectively brought under control.
With the fire spreading and moving closer to the Thames, on the shores of which stood timber constructed warehouses, layed out end to end, each containing every conceivable flammable substance possibly known to man, Bloodworth stood resolute.
With experienced men screaming for permission to start demolishing,he would not give one inch. His response to every plea made was "Pish! A woman could piss it out ".
Samuel Pepys made an entry in his diary on 7th September 1666: "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."
James, Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II and the future King James II, also helped to fight the fire, summoning militias from neighbouring counties. He also rescued foreigners from the mob, often having to cut them down after being hanged.
Helping fuel the belief that the fire was started deliberately was that rather than the fire merely spreading, moving along from one building to the next, was that fires sprang up in several different places, often a fair distance away from another fire.
Eventually, those who believed that the fire was deliberately stared by a foreign power appeared to be vindicated when Thomas Hubert, a French watchmaker, confessed to starting the fire and was hanged at Tyburn.
In 1677 a Nelson's Column-like monument to the Great Fire, built by Sir Christopher Wren, was unveiled in the City of London. On top is a great golden "flame". Three sides of the base carry Latin inscriptions. The one on the east side generally blames Catholics for starting the fire, although most of that was chiselled out in 1831. The monument still stands.
The untold story of the Great Fire of London
By Tom Geoghegan
BBC News Magazine
Wednesday 30th June 2010
The Great Fire of London started accidentally in a bakery, right? That wasn't the view at the time - many believed it was a terrorist attack and violent reprisals against possible suspects soon followed. The date 1666 - like 1066 and 1966 - is one burned on to the collective memory of a nation.
Everyone learns at school that the fire raging for four days in that hot, dry summer began in a bakery in Pudding Lane.
But a new Channel 4 documentary focuses on the lesser known story of the fire - it sparked a violent backlash against London's immigrant population, prompted by the widely-held belief at the time that it was an act of arson committed by a foreign power.
In the days and weeks following the fire, ordinary Londoners - many of whom were displaced and homeless - gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry swiftly launched to find out what happened.
Destroyed 373 acres of the City
13,200 houses, 84 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, and 44 company halls burned down
Raged from Sunday 2 Sept to Thursday 6 Sept 1666
Miraculously, just 10 people thought to have died, although some perished in refugee camps
Rebuilding killed more people than the fire itself
All those witness statements can be found in the inquiry's report, a 50-page document held in the capital's Guildhall.
It suggests the city on the eve of the fire was one fraught with anxiety and paranoia, says Sue Horth, the documentary's executive producer, and the finger of blame was pointed at two countries with which England was at war, Netherlands and France.
"We teach people about Pudding Lane and the hot summer but we don't say that weeks before the Great Fire, the British Navy sailed into the city of West Terschelling in the Netherlands and set fire to it in an act of diplomatic piracy.
'Among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down'
Samuel Pepys, 2 Sept 1666
'God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it'
John Evelyn, 2 Sept 1666
'Pish! A woman could piss it out'
London's Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth.
"London was expecting an act of reprisal against the city. It was expecting something bad to happen, not because it was superstitious or frightened, but because the government had done something bad. So when the fire happened, it was a natural and quite sensible suspicion for the people of London to have."
As the fire raged, and rumours spread that the French had invaded, angry mobs hunted anyone who appeared to be foreign, says Ms Horth. A Swedish diplomat was lynched. A French woman trying to escape to a refugee camp in Spitalfields had her breast cut off because people thought the baby chicks she carried in her apron were fireballs.
"London was a city turned to constant night, with the ash cloud and smoke, and the sun couldn't penetrate, so it was a frightening place to be. Thousands of buildings were razed. People either tried to escape or they fought the fire or they tried to find those responsible."
This violence is the untold story of the fire, says Adrian Tinniswood, author of By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London.
The fire burned for four days
Most people thought it was an attack by the Dutch, because of the recent atrocity by the Royal Navy under Admiral Robert Holmes.
The first victim of the Great Fire was the maidservant at Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane. The fire broke out just after midnight on Sunday 2nd September, trapping Thomas Farriner's family upstairs. They all eventually managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except the maidservant who was too frightened to try. She perished in the flames.
"There was cheering in the streets of London when that happened, so when the fire started, people thought it was the Dutch getting their own back.
"In fact, the fire was caused by a gale blowing across London for four days. It hit London in the early hours of Sunday morning, just as [Thomas] Farriner's bakery goes up in flames. The gale blew embers and bits of straw across the city and fires broke out all over the place, so people said: 'This isn't a fire spreading, it has to be arson'."
On the fourth day, when the fire was finally quelled, King Charles II, the newly restored monarch after years of civil war, tried to calm matters by going to a new camp of 100,000 homeless, and declaring the fire was an act of God.
Shaky confession
The king took a very enlightened view and always believed it was an accident, says Mr Tinniswood. His brother, James, Duke of York, went even further. He rode into the city with his bodyguards and rescued people from the mob, some of whom were in the very act of being hanged on street corners.
Hubert, in a detail of a wider picture of Catholic conspirators from 1667, about to be hanged on Tyburn's "Triple Tree" gallows
The hunt for a foreign scapegoat continued, until one volunteered for the role. At the end of September, the parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the fire, and a French Protestant watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confessed to having deliberately started the fire at the bakery with 23 conspirators.
Ludgate on flames, with St Paul's Cathedral, which perished in the fire, in the background
Although his confession seemed to change and flounder under scrutiny, he was tried and hanged. Afterwards, colleagues told the inquiry Hubert had been at sea with them at the time, and the inquiry concluded the fire had indeed been an accident.
To this day, no-one knows why he confessed.
Pudding Lane today, where the Great Fire started in Thomas Farriner's bakery
Until the 19th Century, the plaque at London's Monument stated that followers of the Pope were to blame, says Ms Horth, and named Hubert as the fire-starter. It was only after Catholic emancipation in the 1820s that the government decided the plaque was inflammatory and had those inscriptions removed.
"This story [about it being an accident] is not necessarily the most helpful for us all to believe," Ms Horth says. "The truth is that we will never know how it began. We now believe it was an accident but 350 years ago certain people thought differently. There are many perspectives to events and it's up to us to understand them all."
It's natural the version of events told to youngsters should airbrush the gruesome details, says Meriel Jeater, curator at the Museum of London.
Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul's after the fire
"The traditional view taught in schools is that it all happened as a happily-ever-after sort of story. It was a terrible disaster, but not many people died, we rebuilt the city in brick so it was fireproof, and isn't St Paul's pretty?
"But the more you investigate, you realise it wasn't all like that. The dark side was that the fire burst on to the surface religious tension and paranoia about national security."
The Great Fire of London Monument stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill in the City of London. It was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London and to celebrate the rebuilding of the City. It is topped with a golden urn of fire. Three sides of the base of the monument carry inscriptions in Latin. The one on the south side describes actions taken by Charles II following the fire. The one on the east describes how the monument was started and brought to perfection, and under which mayors. The one on the north describes how the fire started, how much damage it caused, and how the fire was extinguished. In 1681 the words "but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched" were added to the end of the inscription. The inscription on the east generally blames Roman Catholics for the fire. The words were chiselled out in 1831. A cage was added in the mid-19th century at the top of the Monument to prevent people jumping off, after six people had committed suicide between 1788 and 1842.
It's a tale with echoes today, says Ms Jeater. "When I was curating the exhibition, it wasn't long after the 7/7 bombings and when I was reading about the reactions against Catholics and the Dutch, it struck me that there were a lot of similarities with the backlash against Muslim people after the bombing. A lot of suspicion about people living in London.
"It's different people and different events, but I think human nature is very similar."
BBC News - The untold story of the Great Fire of London
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