The Great Plague of London

The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major out-break of the plague in England, and the first since 1636, when some 10,000 had died, and 1625, when some 35,000 died. In 1603, the plague killed 30,000 Londoners. The English outbreak is thought to have spread from the Netherlands, where the bubonic plague had occurred intermittently since 1599, with the initial contagion arriving with Dutch trading ships carrying bales of cotton from Amsterdam. Amsterdam was ravaged in 1663–1664, with a mortality given as 50,000. The dock areas outside of London, and the parish of St. Giles-in-the Fields where poor workers crowded into ill-kept structures, were the first areas struck by the plague. As records were not kept on the deaths of the very poor, the first recorded case was a Rebecca Andrews, on 12 April 1665.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_Lo...