History & Haunting of Plague Pits Golden Square, Soho, London This delightful little square is situated in the centre of Soho and has a secret history as a 17th century plague pit. As Lord Macaulay wrote in 1685: [it was] a field not to be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years before, when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly believed that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without imminent risk to human life. telegraph.co.uk/ It has been suggested that the basement of 1 Golden Square, is haunted by the voices of children. The building dates from the early 1700’s and according to The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson it could have been built on the site of a plague pit. mysteriousbritain.co.uk By mid July over 1,000 deaths per week were reported in the city. It was rumored that dogs and cats spread the disease, so the Lord Mayor ordered all the dogs and cats destroyed. Author Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Years estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed. The real effect of this was that there were fewer natural enemies of the rats who carried the plague fleas, so the germs spread more rapidly. Photo 1 by williamblakereloaded.wordpress- Photo art 2Death is shown as a skeleton carrying a scythe, with an hourglass at his feet. Photo art 3The Great Plague of London, 1665
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:49:27 +0000
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