Thomas Farriner and his family climbed out of the window, to the roof, and escaped to the neighbour’s house… all except their maid. A panorama of the City of London in 1616 by Claes Visscher. The tenement housing on London Bridge (far right) was a notorious death-trap in case of fire; much would be destroyed in a fire in 1633. [15] Fire hazards in the city King Charles II Porter, Stephen (28 September 2006). "The great fire of London". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/95647. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Tinniswood, 44: "He didn't have the experience, the leadership skills or the natural authority to take charge of the situation." Despite this, residents were inclined to put the blame for the fire on foreigners, particularly Catholics, the French, and the Dutch. [120] Trained bands were put on guard and foreigners arrested in locations throughout England. [121] An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was a member of a gang that had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board a ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. [122] [123]

A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane [a] a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, thus becoming the first victim. [46] The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission. [47] Jones, J.R (2013). The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century Modern Wars In Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-89948-8. Tinniswood, Adrian (2003). By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-06226-3. The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan, which still exists today. [5] London in the 1660s Field, Jacob (2017). London, Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666: Disaster and Recovery. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-09932-3.

The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multistory timbered London tenement houses had " jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. [21] The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. [22] In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact. [23] A ten-year-old boy called Edward Taylor and his family were questioned for throwing fireballs at an open window in Pudding Lane and in the streets. Fireballs were made from animal fat (called tallow), set alight and used to start fires. However, the fire was most likely caused by chance rather than by a deliberate act. The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose. [138] Townsperson: I’ve heard that more than 300 houses have been burned by a fire, Sir, and it’s still going.

All the houses in London were so close together, which is a very good thing for escaping…But it also helped the fire to spread. SINGS) Something’s burning, something’s burning. Fetch the ketchup, fetch the ketchup… BBQ! BBQ! It’s burnt and it’s crispy.Before ovens were invented all food had to be cooked on fires.

Soon London was filled with smoke. The sky was red with huge flames from the fire. By Monday, 300 houses had burned down. A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover. [132] [133] By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. [6] [7] John Evelyn, contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". [8] By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. [9] London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into extramural settlements such as Shoreditch, Holborn, Cripplegate, Clerkenwell and Southwark, and the Inns of Court. To the West it reached along Strand to the Royal Palace and Abbey at Westminster. [9] [10]