LONDON IN EUINS. 207 



ef fire simultaneously with the gale. The inhabitants were powerless to extingnish it; 

 and the wind blew the ruins, almost as much as the fire, in all directions. If the people 

 came to windward they were in danger of being blown into the flames, and to leeward 

 they dared not approach the fire, which would have scorched them up. Those who 

 escaped the conflagration ran the imminent risk o being knocked on the head by bricks and 

 tiles, which flew about as though they were tinder. The storm, although most severe 

 on the Friday before-mentioned, lasted almost continuously for a week. 



The city of London was a strange spectacle at this time. "The houses looked like 

 skeletons," says Defoe, ' e and an universal air of horror seemed to sit on the countenances 

 of the people. All business seemed to be laid aside for the time, and people were generally 

 intent upon getting help to repair their habitations." The streets lay covered with tiles and 

 slates, bricks and chimney-pots. Common tiles rose from 21s. per thousand to 6. Above 

 2,000 great stacks of chimneys were blown down in and about London, besides gable-ends and 

 roofs by the score, and .about twenty whole houses in the suburbs. In addition to those killed 

 by the fall of various parts of buildings, above 200 were reported as wounded and maimed. 

 And it must be remembered that these were not the days of morning and evening and 

 special editions, and copious and generally correct reports. Had telegraphs and railways 

 and steamships brought in the news collected by innumerable correspondents, as they would 

 to-day, Defoe's book would never have been compiled. And it may be here observed, in 

 honour of the memory of that immortal author, that he never cites a case, or speaks of it 

 as a positive fact, without giving his authority or authorities. He says in one place, 

 " Some of our printed accounts give us larger and plainer accounts of the loss of lives than 

 I will venture to affirm for truth: as of several houses near Moorfields levelled with the 

 ground; fourteen people drowned in a wherry going to Gravesend and five in a wherry 

 from Chelsea. Not that it is not very probable to be true, but, as I resolve not to hand 

 anything to posterity but what comes very well attested, I omit such relations as I 

 have not extraordinary assurance as to the fact." This is hardly the way with all 

 book-makers ! 



Most of those killed were buried or crushed by the broken fragments and rubbish 

 of falling stacks of chimneys or walls. The fall of brick walls made a serious item in 

 the losses. At Greenwich Park several pieces of the wall were down for a hundred rods 

 at a place; the palace of St. James's was greatly damaged; the roof of the guard-house 

 at "Whitehall blown off, seriously hurting nine soldiers; the lead stripped off and rolled 

 up like parchment from scores of churches and public buildings, including Westminster 

 Abbey and Christ Church Hospital. "It was very remarkable," Defoe notes, "that the 

 bridge over the Thames [i.e., Old London Bridge] received so little damage, the buildings 

 standing high and not sheltered by other erections, as they would be in the streets. Above 

 a hundred elms, some of them said to have been planted by Wolsey, were blown down in 

 St. James's Park. Very fortunately the storm was succeeded by fine weather: for had 

 Tain or snow followed, the misery and damage to hundreds and hundreds of tenants would 

 have been fearfully increased. 



At Stowmarket, in Suffolk, one of the largest spires 100 feet high above the 

 -steeple was completely carried away, with all its heavy timbers and an immense quantity 



