The English town that stopped the plague | BBC Global

The bubonic plague has been identified in the US for the first time in nearly a decade. But, thanks to modern medicine, it is much less deadly than it was in the past.
When The Great Plague struck 17th century England, one rural community took decisive action that still fascinates historians centuries later.
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[@Bobaklives]

Well made, enjoy the brevity combined with well-selected visuals - tells the story efficiently and then wraps up.

[@cedley1969]

Beautiful little village, well worth a visit, the surrounding countryside is amazing too.

[@thegamershq8351]

omg! i went with my school ages ago, you see that tailors house?

[@southwestsearch]

Bravo!! For the intuitive and initiative.

[@johnleos1687]

Love the music chosen for the background! Interesting story, very enlightened people for that time period! I look forward to more videos of History! 😃🇺🇸

[@domcarter4326]

Always remember going on a school trip here back in primary school

[@charlotteillustration5778]

I would be interested to know how many of the villagers survived at the end.

[@markshrimpton3138]

Around 430 survived from a population of about 800. Some of them were ancestors of mine.

[@user-mt2uj8xl2u]

Why is it the music is always too loud and it rounds out the person speaking

[@djjoshuahall]

Just you that

[@curtisrobinson7962]

BBC does this with Dr Who, too.

[@just_passing_through]

Playing this on my iPad, the music is playing very softly in the background, in no way interfering with the narration. This sound very much like a you problem, or more accurately a your device problem.

[@WillyJunior]

poorly mixed audio, that's the problem. The speaking is too bassy and muffled.

[@johnleos1687]

Music is not loud and actually quiet enjoyable! 🤨

[@user-em3vl6li5w]

Eyam is such a beautiful spot, lost in time, very atmospheric. Wish people cared as much for their neighbors today.

[@YesSir-ms3uk]

God bless the English

[@esotericautist7420]

They enacted a local lockdown and used social distancing to combat the spread of the bacterium.

[@Trebor74]

And it didn't work.

[@johnpixie]

@@Trebor74 did you not watch till the end?

[@beztoop342]

Visit if you can ... beautiful village very atmospheric and quite sobering to think how many people paid the ultimate price to halt to the infection.

[@54mgtf22]

Interesting place. Well worth a visit.

[@piggugudu1327]

It was a heavy sacrifice… I visited and you can see in front of so many houses a plaque commemorating those who passed :( but it’s amazing the precautions they took, in a time far before germ theory. And their descendants have some recompense in the form of a slightly stronger immune response to certain sicknesses, if I remember correctly.

[@JeffEbe-te2xs]

Smarter then us during Covid

[@alienOG-zh2xs]

Than

[@tvviewer4500]

No. Plague is actually dangerous but not as much as this makes it seem. Covid only affects mentally ill people

[@margaretr5701]

Definitely smarter than some people.

[@tvviewer4500]

@@margaretr5701 you’re over due for your annual booster smart guy

[@skibbideeskitch9894]

COVID 19 was not the same as an outbreak of bubonic plague in the 1660s, for fucks sake. Some people may've acted like it was. But it wasn't.

[@fioname3495]

We lost 5 family members at Eyam during this time - I’m a direct descendant.

[@doghat1619]

I'm sorry for your loss. 🙏🏻

[@gordonspringate7500]

Music too loud.

[@Pallethands]

It's stories like these that make me think it wasn't the bubonic plague but the pneumonic plague.

[@jeangoodenough2628]

As a child I was very impressed when I read the book 'The Brave Men of Eyam'.

[@ACK333]

What brings a family, it’s love inside.

[@lauraskonce3502]

The novel Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks is based on this village.

[@Fomites]

It's interesting that they had the insight (or perhaps it was an educated guess) to use vinegar to disinfect the coins. This was about 200 years before it was understood that microbes were the cause of infections. Although in this case it probably would not have made much difference because the infection is transmitted by flea bite.

[@jeff__w]

What do town records and epidemiological studies show of the incidence of plague in the surrounding areas, as opposed to what might have happened had Eyam not taken the steps it did? Is it merely assumed that Eyam “stopped the plague” or does the historical record show that it did?

[@d.l.l.6578]

I could hear this better if you didn’t play loud music that drowns out the voice. Why do we all have to keep saying that????? Otherwise, coherent presentation.

[@user-go6il2tm4b]

Huk no subtitles! I cry as an english learner

[@legitbeans9078]

It does though

[@Querulously]

I am reading them now

[@AdAm-dd4jq]

It has them on mine.

[@user-go6il2tm4b]

@legitbeans9078 there is only automatic subtitles. Not madmade. It has a lot of typos

[@aliceberethart]

Excellent opportunity to learn English.

[@bijoychandraroy]

bro was smart

[@MICHGO1]

IS THE ANNOYING MUSIC REALLY NECESSARY?

[@robnewman6101]

Great Plauge & Fires of London. 1665 & 1666. Reign of His Majesty King Charles the 2nd. Samuel Pepys the Diarist. Sir Christopher Wren.

[@mangoldm]

I would call the villagers actions self interest, not self sacrifice. And good for them.

[@WhichDoctor1]

When plague broke out anywhere in those times it was usually the first selfish instinct of those with means to leave and travel to somewhere without plague to save themselves. Of course at least a few of those people would already be carrying the plague with them and spread it further, but others would genuinely escape and save their own lives. It was a better selfish choice for individuals to flee to somewhere potentially safe than to stay somewhere they knew to be deadly, even though it inevitably spreading the disease further and caused untold further deaths. there’s no doubt that some of the folks in that village died who would have lived if they’d run. But soo many others in neighbouring villages lived who otherwise would have died. Giving up your own chance at safety to keep others safe is the definition of selflessness

[@johnkidd797]

​@@WhichDoctor1 Yup.

[@Kx0195]

The OG social distancing.

[@patglass8263]

Lets back the bus up here. A village in 1665 that dumps its raw sewage in the streets and gutters, then it washes away down the street when it rains. The village collects its drinking water from wells that are in the village. This village claims it got a plague by narrowing it down to a single bundle of cloth. That's pretty amazing science.

[@CarollFord2019]

The cloth was riddled with fleas infected from rats that carried the plague. If you listened to the story.

[@jessicaphillips1039]

clearly never been to Eyam, the Peak District.. or i'm guessing, England.

[@Alphoric]

Imagine buying some cloth online and it comes with the plague

[@embalmertrick1420]

😂 I bought a mango wood bed once, came from India. Unpacking it, l found some scruffy feathers, immediately though, that's how the zombie apocalypse could start!! 😱😂

[@richardsullman7939]

R a precursor to the 15 minute city. History repeats it self.

[@doghat1619]

15 minute cities aren't a conspiracy, it's just fairly logical. jog on richard

[@paulbeachcroft3323]

A village, not a town....

[@henkmagnetic3103]

Lucky there wasn't someone well-heeled around that felt this could have interfered with their profit-making. Maybe in the village beforehand.

[@MoonSpinners]

Unnecessary music

[@user-bi9nu8lq5g]

Bloody music

[@martinrussell8580]

Bbc propaganda about how lockdowns are a good thing

[@willb4552]

Must have been the vaccines. 😂

[@michaelberringer8595]

Where's the diversity?

[@RottingEarth]

Retard

[@SeanO-jv2jr]

'The town that sopped the plague"... "by the end of the outbreak, 267 people had died in Eyam". It's like America claiming they won Vietnam

[@Aztesticals]

Dude they stopped it spreading to other villages nearby. It was already inside. They stopped infected people fleeing at night all over like was normal and so protected all the other villages around them to a degree

[@Forditude69]

​@@Aztesticals it's still misleading. They probably could've said 'slowed it down' but that's not as clickbaity.

[@isotropisch82]

They stopped the plague because at that time there was no outbreak in Derbyshire, which is a long way from London (or was then)

[@SeanO-jv2jr]

Yeah I get that. Ford had it; I was pointing out the misleading nature of the title.

[@NatalieAuer-id4tz]

Fyi, Year of Wonders (2001) by Geraldine Brooks is a good historical novel based on the story of the town.

[@theenlightenedone1283]

It surely was God Almighty's wrath ... and if u don't beg for forgiveness another epidemic will visit u soon 😶

[@st20332]

Yeah epidemics happen, you can't just claim god done all the work because something happened. I could claim I've done them all, because, well, they happened.

[@2malachi]

Surely you mean 'we'? And there's no need to beg, if one is baptised into Christ, sin becomes impossible, slips forgiven through his blood.

[@yuyutubee8435]

Don't be a superstitious c***.

[@nffctrickett]

Visted eyam as a kid wth school. On the plaquared of dead victims of the plague my last name trickett was on tgere and have never met another trickett. I like to imagine it was a relative