These properties were soon vandalised and became rat-infested slums. When Royalists had fled the country during the Commonwealth, they had left many fine town houses vacant, and some immigrants to London had crowded into them, converting them into tenements that housed different families in every room. The government had tried to limit the development of these "suburbs", but had failed: Over a quarter of a million people lived in them. Outside the city walls, shanty towns with wooden shacks and no sanitation had sprung up, providing homes for the craftsmen and tradespeople who had flocked to the already overcrowded city. Another hazard was the choking black smoke belching forth from soap factories, breweries, iron smelters and about 15,000 households that were burning coal to heat their homes. The poor walked, and might be drenched by water tossed up by wheeled vehicles, slops thrown into the street, or water pouring off overhanging roofs. Those who were better-off used hackney carriages and sedan chairs to get to their destinations without getting filthy. The nineteen-arch London Bridge was even more congested.
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Carts, carriages, horses and pedestrians were crowded together, and the gateways in the wall formed bottlenecks through which it was difficult to progress. Some of the city's necessities, such as coal, arrived by barge, but most came by road. The stench was overwhelming, and people walked around with handkerchiefs or nosegays pressed against their nostrils. The City Corporation employed "rakers" to remove the worst of the filth, and it was transported to mounds outside the walls, where it accumulated and continued to decompose. The cobbles were slippery with animal droppings, rubbish and the slops thrown out of the houses they were muddy and buzzing with flies in summer, and awash with sewage in winter. There was no sanitation, and open drains flowed along the centre of winding streets. In the poorer parts of the city, filled with overcrowded tenements and garrets, hygiene was impossible to maintain. There were gates in the wall at Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Bishopsgate and Aldgate, and the Thames was crossable at London Bridge. London at that time was a city of about 448 acres surrounded by a city wall that had originally been built to keep out raiding bands, and, in the south, by the River Thames. In late 1664, a bright comet was seen in the sky, and the people of London became fearful, wondering what evil event it portended. There were 30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, 10,000 in 1636, and smaller numbers in other years. The disease periodically erupted into massive epidemics.
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The plague was endemic in 17th-century London, as it was in other European cities at the time. Map of London by Wenceslaus Hollar, c.1665