The Great London Fire - Episode 3

Good morning, we are going to conclude our series on the Great London Fire today.  Will the fire get put out?  What stopped the fire?  How did the city rebuild?  The run time for the final episode is 44:32.

It is September 5; a strong wind has been blowing the fire west.  However, the wind changes, and now the fire is heading for the Tower of London.  The Tower of London is the most important building in London.  It is also the biggest ammunition dump in the country. 

Nothing is immune from the fire’s destruction.  The people were terrified.  St. Paul’s Cathedral has been wiped out.  Thousands of books were burned during the fire.  Bookseller Joshua Viner lost his entire stock.  He would sink into debt and would die penniless. Robert Viner, the banker, would fair much better.  Sybil Tame, the shoemaker would lose her shop and would lose everything.  She would take shelter at nearby Christ’s Hospital. 

A group of firefighters made their way to the Tower of London.  Their job was to protect the tower.  However, it would be a challenge.  Everyone’s eyes were on the Tower.  Would the firefighters manage to save the Tower?  Dan Jones catches up with Ronald Hutton at the Tower of London.  Hutton talks about the munitions held in the tower and if it was destroyed it would have been similar to a low-level nuclear device.  How could the firefighters save the Tower? 

Rob Bell talks about how the firefighters would tear down houses, creating firebreaks.  He goes to a firefighter training school to see if this method would work.  However, by tearing down the houses there was more fuel for the fire.  There was no time to clear away the debris.  The methods changed, and so the firefighters would clear the debris from the torn-down houses.  Rob Bell experiments with this method and discovers that clearing the debris worked at preventing the fire from spreading.  If only this method was employed earlier, perhaps the fire would not have spread so fast.

How did Londoners stop the fire from spreading to the Tower?  Ronald Hutton talks about how the house was torn down and that the area was blown up with gunpowder.  So gun powder was used to save the gunpowder.

How many people died in the Great Fire?  Suzannah Lipscomb talks about the record showing that six people died at the fire.  However, this is absurdly low.  The authorities tried to keep careful records, particularly the method of death.  Suzannah looks at the records for 1666 and talks with the historian.  The historian talks about how the printing press and the reporting of deaths broke down.  Suzannah suggests that it would have suggested many, many people died.  The historian talks about how information was at people’s fingertips and if there was a massive amount of death it would have been known about by the gossip.

Suzannah believes that there would have been hundreds of deaths due to the Great Fire.  She talks with historian Neil Hansen who wrote a book on the Great Fire.  From history, when there was a great fire, thousands of people would have died.  As a result of history, he believes that thousands of people disappeared during the Great Fire.  Many of these people would have been the poorer in society so nobody would have cared about them.  Their deaths would have gone unrecorded.  However, would the temperatures of the great fire be enough to consume a human body?  Evidence showed the fire was hot enough to melt metal.  The thought of the fire hot enough to consume a human body terrifies Suzannah.

The firefighters continued to tear down streets and create fire breaks.  Finally, the wind started to decline.  Slowly the fire started getting under control.  The fire had reached the Tailor Hall Guild.  It was here where the fire was stopped.  Thousands of people were homeless, millions of pounds of damage were done to the buildings, and London was in shambles.  How would London recover from the Great Fire?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more.

This was an excellent conclusion to the Great London Fire series.  This is one excellent series for research purposes.