A Day the Black Death Reached London, 1348

In the summer of 1348, ships from English-held Gascony carried a new sickness into the little Dorset port of modern Weymouth. It spread up the roads through Salisbury, Winchester, and Bristol, and by the feast of All Saints — 1 November 1348 — it had reached London, a walled city of 70,000 souls packed into a square mile of timber houses, open drains, fish markets, and dung heaps. Nobody called it the Black Death yet; they called it “the pestilence” or “the great mortality,” and they believed it came from corrupted air, bad planetary conjunctions, or the wrath of God...

Time Surfing: Graphic History - read it here.