The Plague Village of Eyam (1665)

Past events, not medical advice. Nothing here says what is safe today.

The cloth

In late August 1665 a bundle of cloth arrived from London for Alexander Hadfield, the village tailor. His assistant, George Viccars, hung the damp cloth by the fire to dry. It carried fleas, and the fleas carried plague. Viccars was dead by 7 September. Neighbors and members of the tailor’s household followed him within weeks.

Plague is a bacterial infection spread by fleas on small animals. It causes swollen lymph nodes called buboes, usually in the armpit, neck or groin, with fever and vomiting. In 1665 people blamed bad air or divine punishment. They did not blame fleas.

The agreement

Eyam had two clergymen. William Mompesson was the rector, in his late twenties. Thomas Stanley was a Puritan minister who had lost the post for refusing to conform to the Church of England’s rules. Between them they persuaded the villagers to stay put, to stay inside the village boundary, and to bury their dead quickly near their homes instead of in the churchyard. Church services moved outdoors to a natural rock arch at Cucklett Delf, so that people were not crammed into pews. Sources differ on when exactly the full set of measures began. One puts it at May 1666.

Supplies

A village under quarantine still has to eat. People from surrounding villages left food at the boundary. The Earl of Devonshire at Chatsworth is credited with supplying food and medicine. The villagers paid by leaving coins in a boundary stone or in a trough of vinegar. They thought vinegar killed the disease. Whether it did anything is doubtful.

The cost

Elizabeth Hancock buried her husband and six children within eight days in August 1666, and is reported to have done it largely by herself. Their graves, the Riley Graves, are still there. The worst month was August 1666, when 78 people are recorded to have died. The rector’s wife, Catherine, died during the outbreak and is buried at the church.

The commonly cited toll is 260 deaths out of about 800 people over 14 months. Other accounts say about a third of the village, or half. The pre-plague population is itself an estimate, so treat the percentage as rough.

Did it work?

Historians generally credit the quarantine with keeping plague from spreading to the surrounding area. It is also true that nobody knows what would have happened otherwise. At least one recent book takes a skeptical look at how voluntary and how airtight the Eyam quarantine really was.

One popular claim says descendants of survivors carry a gene variant, CCR5-Δ32, that protected their ancestors. Village sources and a Wellcome Collection feature repeat it. Studies of descendants have been small and inconclusive, and a 2004 mouse study in Nature found no protection against plague. We are not treating it as established.

On the record

• Plague arrived in Eyam in late August 1665 in cloth sent from London. Viccars was dead by 7 September.
• The villagers agreed to a quarantine under Mompesson and Stanley, with help from outside villages and the Earl of Devonshire.
• About 260 villagers died over 14 months, by the commonly cited figure.
• Plague is spread by fleas. Nobody in 1665 knew that.

Missing from the record

• The exact death toll and the village population before the plague.
• When each measure started, and how strictly the boundary held.
• Whether the quarantine is what stopped the spread. That is probable, not proven.
• Whether the CCR5-Δ32 gene variant protected anyone. The evidence points the other way.