Great Fire of London live stream: Part 2 - Full transcript

[stream begins]

[00:01:08]

Marina:

Hello and welcome to this live stream from the Museum of London! We should have schools and families joining us today, so I’d like to give a warm welcome to all of you.

My name is Marina and I’ll be your host for today, and joining us we have Meriel Jeater and Meriel is a curator at the museum and our expert on the Great Fire of London.

[00:01:32]

Meriel:

Hi everybody!

[00:01:34]

Marina:

Fantastic! So, we just have a few important things to remind you of before we get started today.

Firstly, our Great Fire live streams are totally free and we never ask for card details to watch, so please do NOT enter your card details before you watch.

Secondly, we're streaming from our homes again, so there might be a few technical hitches. Please do bear with us!

Please make sure that you have an adult with you during the stream, and encourage them to get involved too!

If you are watching via Facebook, please make sure that your preferred profile settings are set to your privacy settings before you comment. We aren’t responsible for what is said in the comments but we do encourage you to be as sensitive as you can to others. And if you do comment on the stream, remember that the message and account name will be visible to the public.

Now adults, it’s up to you to type in questions, so remember not to share any personal details, including children’s first names. We do hope that you can all see and hear us clearly. Just give us a like or a comment on Facebook to let us know it’s all working! And, do let us know if you’re joining us again!

[00:02:48]

Now, today is the second of our 3-part series about the Great Fire of 1666. It's especially for children studying it in Key Stage 1, but we hope everyone will still enjoy it.

Each day we’ll give you a short tour of an exhibition that we made about it called Fire! Fire!, with actions and activities for you to do together.

Before we tell you about today’s theme, we want to say a big thank you to everyone for sending their artwork in last week! There were some really amazing pieces and we’ll be sharing some of them at the end of today’s stream.

The theme for our tour today is, 'What did people do while the fire was happening, and how was it eventually put out?'

[00:03:33]

Meriel:

After your tour, we’ll give you three minutes to talk to each other about what you’ve seen and heard, and share any questions you have about it via the comments in Facebook. Then I will answer some of your questions live!

Now if we’re lucky, we’ll get loads of questions so I won’t be able to answer them all face-to-face. But we’ll do our best to answer them in the comments in Facebook afterwards.

And if you’re really keen, and are looking for something fun to do afterwards, we’ll even suggest an exciting activity for you to do at the end.

[00:04:02]

Marina:

So, what are we waiting for? Are you ready to go back into the exhibition? Then let’s get started! My colleague Nina is back to show you around.

[00:04:20]

Meriel:

Because the fire was so fierce, a lot of people gave up trying to put it out and they concentrated on trying to save as many of their belongings as they could. And we know a lot about the fire, because of a diary written by a man called Samuel Pepys.

Nina:

Oh yes.

Meriel:

And he worked for the navy and he describes people fleeing from the fire, through the streets of London, and even on the river, they were putting their belongings into boats.

[00:04:44]

Meriel:

And he says that one in three boats had a virginal in it. And this is a virginal. So it’s like a piano I suppose and it would have been expensive so definitely the sort of thing you would want to rescue from the fire.

Nina:

It’s very beautiful.

[00:05:00]

I suppose it’s a bit like today, we might not rescue our pianos, we might rescue PlayStations and computers and all the expensive items we have.

Meriel:

Yes.

Nina:

So, all these people worrying about their belongings. But what about fighting the fire?

Meriel:

Well, I’ve got some firefighting equipment over here so I can show you that.

[00:05:22]

Meriel:

Lots of people worked together to fight The Great Fire. So you had the King, Charles II, his brother, the Duke of York, soldiers from the army, people from the navy and Londoners themselves, all working together. And the main thing they had to do was to pull houses down to create gaps to stop the fire from spreading.

And to do that, they had these huge hooks called fire hooks so you put that over the timbers of a house and you pull and that pulls the house down.

[00:05:48]

Nina:

That is huge, isn’t it? And it looks very heavy. I can’t imagine trying to use it to pull houses down.

Meriel:

No well it took three of us just to put it into the exhibition. So, it is really heavy.

[00:06:00]

Nina:

I tell you what, why don’t you try with a friend, imagining you’re using a huge fire hook to pull houses down. Meriel and I will demonstrate. It would be really heavy, wouldn’t it? And hard to do.

Meriel:

Yes.

Nina:

And then you would have your houses crumbling down.

[00:06:16]

Meriel:

Yes, the thing you could do is throw buckets of water onto the fire. We’ve got leather buckets here, the sort they would have used. And using fire squirts as well. So, this is like a huge syringe. So you put the pointy end in a bucket of water and then then you pull the handle out, to suck the water up.

Nina:

Yes.

Meriel:

And then you aim it and you push the handle and the water squirts out. So, that’s like a huge water pistol sort of thing.

[00:06:41]

Nina:

Why don’t you have a go with your fire squirt? Soak up the water, aim, pssshhhhh!

[00:06:51]

Meriel:

Even school children helped to fight the fire. And we know this because there was a boy called William Taswell and he was 14 years old in 1666. And he wrote his memories of The Great Fire when he was an adult. And he worked together with other school boys from Westminster School to fight the fire around the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East. And they stopped the church from being destroyed.

Nina:

Fantastic, good for William.

Meriel:

Yes.

[00:07:13]

Nina:

So, no fire brigade in those days, or fire engines like we know today.

Meriel:

No, so they didn’t have a fire brigade, but they did have fire engines, but they were much simpler than the ones we have today. I can show you one if you like.

Nina:

Oh, yes please.

[00:07:33]

Meriel:

This is the type of fire engine they would have had in 1666. So it’s really simple, it’s a barrel on wheels with a pump in the centre. So you have to fill it up with buckets of water and then you push the arms down and that makes the water squirt out of the pipe in the centre. So, you have to push down at the same time. So you push down and then the water squirts out.

[00:07:56]

Nina:

So you might want to try pumping the fire engine. It would be quite hard work.

Meriel:

It would, yes - really hard work.

[00:08:12]

Marina:

Well, we hope you enjoyed that. I certainly learned a lot again this week!

Now it's your chance to have a good think and talk amongst yourselves about what you’ve seen and heard and to share any questions that you have for us using the Facebook comments.

I’m really looking forward to hearing your questions today!

Remember not to share any children's first names, but do let us know the name of your school and class if you’re at school. Focus your questions on what we’re learning today, how people responded to the fire and how it was put out.

You’ve got three minutes to think and share your questions. Go!

[Three minute countdown clock begins]

[00:11:57]

Marina:

We’ve had some brilliant questions come in, so without further ado, let’s get answering them...

So, our first question is from Laura and it’s, “How did they know that the fire was coming towards them, Meriel?”

[00:12:15]

Meriel:

Well the wind was blowing it in one particular direction so I think if you lived a few streets away you would know from the direction of the flames and the sparks that the fire was kind of coming in your direction. I’m sure a lot of people sort of ran out of their houses and packed up as quickly as they could, knowing that the fire was sort of gradually getting closer to them. But the hard thing to know was just how fast it was going.

[00:12:40]

Marina:

Excellent. And was there anyone letting them know that the fire was coming?

[00:12:45]

Meriel:

There would have been lots of people sort of yelling warnings to people, ‘It started at the end of this road, you’ve got to pack up your belongings’ - yep, there would have been a lot of that.

[00:12:55]

Marina:

So a bit of warning then.

Meriel:

Yeah.

[00:12:58]

Marina:

We’ve got some interesting questions from Liane. So, “Why did they not take the fire seriously in the first two days?”

[00:13:04]

Meriel:

It was really only right at the beginning when they didn’t take the fire as seriously as perhaps they should have done. The Lord Mayor came to see the fire at about three o’clock in the morning and he thought ‘Oh, it’ll be easy to put it out,’ and he went back to bed, and I think because people were asleep and things like that, maybe there wasn’t enough people around to really tackle it right at the start.

[00:13:28]

Marina:

Yeah, that makes sense. You mention the mayor, so Ray has asked, “Who was the Mayor of London at that time?”

[00:13:36]

Meriel:

His name was Thomas Bloodworth and he got a very bad reputation for not doing enough to fight the fire and Samuel Pepys in his diaries is quite mean about him.

[00:13:49]

Marina:

Interesting! And we do actually have a question from Monkfield Primary School about that gentleman that you just mentioned. They would like to know a bit more about Samuel Pepys.

[00:13:59]

Meriel:

So, Samuel Pepys was 33 at the time of the fire. He had a wife called Elizabeth and he lived in Seething Lane which is quite close to the Tower of London. And he worked for the Navy Office and he was administrator so he did lots of office work for the navy. And he wrote this diary for nine or ten years and he describes loads of information about his personal life, his friends and family and all the events that are happening in London.

[00:14:25]

Marina:

So, it’s a really important source of information. Must be quite interesting to read!

Meriel:

Yes very!

[00:14:34]

Marina:

Now we have some questions about the firefighting equipment that you showed us. We have, “Is the fire hook real?” And that’s a question from Katherine.

[00:14:45]

Meriel:

Yes, it is! Yeah, our fire hook is a genuine one. The handle isn’t as long as it should be. At some point in the past it was cut off so it would be even longer originally.

[00:14:57]

Marina:

Wow and it is huge anyway.

Meriel:

Yeah.

[00:15:01]

Marina:

We have a question from Lisa as well... from Carly, sorry. And they say, “Why were the buckets made out of leather?”

[00:15:11]

Meriel:

Because leather is very strong, you can make it quite hard and it’s quite light as well and you can make it waterproof by putting tar on the inside.

[00:15:21]

Marina:

So ideal for shifting heavy water around.

Meriel:

Definitely.

[00:15:27]

Marina:

And we have some questions about who actually helped put the fire out. So, the first is from Lisa: “Was there anyone who didn’t help put the fire out?”

[00:15:37]

Meriel:

I suppose quite a lot of people concentrated on saving as many of their belongings as they could from escaping from London. So apparently the streets were full of carts and panicking people running away. But the King and the Duke of York set up these firefighting bases around the city and each of those had 100 fire volunteers. So at least 800 people helped put out the fire, plus soldiers and sailors as well.

[00:16:05]

Marina:

Wow so it was a big effort!

Meriel:

Yeah.

[00:16:07]

Marina:

And Jemma has asked, “Did women help to fight the fire?”

[00:16:12]

Meriel:

Well we don’t actually know who was amongst the volunteers that helped. I don’t think the descriptions really say whether they were men or women or that women didn’t or did help fight the fire. No, I’m not really sure the answer to that question.

[00:16:29]

Marina:

It’s a really interesting question!

Meriel:

Yeah well, I don’t see why you wouldn’t...

Marina:

Thank you for that question, I think it was a very good one. What else do we have... so... we’ve answered that one... “How did they put water into the fire cart?”

[00:16:52]

Meriel:

Well they tried to fill up some of the fire engines using water from the Thames but apparently at least one of the engines actually fell into the river, so they weren’t able to use it. So, it could be quite difficult to fill up a fire engine with water.

[00:17:10]

Marina:

That was a really good question from Elaine there. We have lots of questions about using gun powder to pull the house down. So, we have a question: “Wouldn’t blowing up the houses with gun powder actually start more fires?”.

[00:17:27]

Meriel:

Well it seems like the opposite thing to do, doesn’t it?! Using gun powder in a fiery situation. What they wanted to do was pull the houses down really quickly so they could create these gaps to stop the fire from spreading. So, if you have to pull a house down by hand it can take quite a long time and by the time you’ve actually got rid of the house, you know the bits of it have caught fire and the fire has spread anyway.

So, what you could do with gun powder is put a barrel of it underneath a couple of the structural timbers of the house and that sort of blows the house up and it all comes collapsing down and you can clear away the debris really quickly.

So, it seems like a crazy thing to do but it actually worked really well.

[00:18:07]

Marina:

Much faster, I guess. And that does actually I think, hopefully that answers Karen’s question, “Why did they pull the houses down if they were on fire?”. So, for a wind break... a break. A wind break?

[00:18:21]

Meriel:

Yeah, so because there was this wind pushing the fire across the city, they were trying to contain it by creating a gap that was big enough that the wind wouldn’t make the fire jump across gap. So actually they were pulling down some houses that weren’t even on fire at all because they just wanted to make these breaks.

So I imagine if yours was one of those houses, you’d be like ‘my house is fine, please don’t pull it down!’ But you know it had to go in order to make gaps.

Marina:

Definitely. Must be quite - quite a shock to the system.

Meriel:

Yeah

[00:18:54]

Marina:

We have a question from Karl: “How did they stop the bridges across the Thames from burning down?”

[00:19:01]

Meriel:

There was only one bridge across the Thames at the time- London Bridge. And well London Bridge was actually saved by an earlier fire so there were lots of houses on London Bridge and in 1633 some of the houses burnt down at the top end of the bridge and they created this gap and that gap still existed in 1666 which meant that the fire didn’t spread across the bridge and down to the south of the river.

[00:19:30]

Marina:

Wow, so quite lucky in that sense, I guess. Now we have talked about the fire hook and Rachel has a good question saying, “How many people did it take to use those hooks?”

[00:19:44]

Meriel:

Quite a few. So there were pictures of people using them and I think there’s about three or four people. So, you’ve got one person holding the pole of the hook. And then two more people with ropes helping kind of position it. Because they’re so long and heavy it’s definitely not a one person job.

[00:20:05]

Marina:

Definitely. Ok, we also have a question from Class Violet, Monkfield Park School. They say, “How is it possible to fill a barrel of water when the whole of London was on fire?”

[00:20:20]

Meriel:

Well we’ve got the Thames nearby, people also had wells and there was piped water going through the city. So, you could tap into that pipe system to get some water out but it was certainly a big problem and they were right to ask that question.

As actually people broke into the pipes so much so that the water sort of ran away and couldn’t be used. So, there was definitely a problem with water supply.

[00:20:51]

Marina:

Great question there from Class Violet. Thank you. We have a very similar question from Kushboo and they say, “How did people carry such heavy pianos in the midst of such a big fire?”

[00:21:06]

Meriel:

Oh, that piano from the film is actually fairly light. You can lift it between two people. So, it’s not quite as big as a modern piano, they’re designed to sort of sit on tabletops really. So, they’re fairly portable.

[00:21:21]

Marina:

I wouldn’t like to carry a huge grand piano I don’t think.

We have another question around hiding things or keeping things safe. Pamela asks, “Why did Samuel Pepys actually hide the wine and cheese?”

[00:21:38]

Meriel:

I think what he was hoping to do was just to keep it safe. If it was under the soil perhaps it wouldn’t get burnt because he’d spent quite a lot time over two or three days taking carts and boats to get all of his belongings to various friends' houses further out of the city and I think he must have thought, ‘Ah I can’t take anything more anywhere else, I’ll just bury it in the garden and hope that it’s alright.’

[00:22:05]

Marina:

They were obviously very important possessions to him.

Meriel:

Yes.

[00:22:10]

Marina:

Melanie asks, “Was there a major problem with looting during the fire?” and I think quite a few people have asked this question.

[00:22:17]

Meriel:

Yes, there absolutely was. People stole things from carts in the chaos and when people were out in the fields sort of sitting round their belongings, things got stolen in the fields as well. Particularly if you’d put a whole pile of your possessions in the field and then maybe you’d gone back into London to get some more, by the time you got back more of your stuff would have been taken.

[00:22:44]

Marina:

It must have been an awful situation.

So, we do have some questions about the firefighters again. This one is actually about what they wore. So, Sarah asks, “What did a fireman wear at that time?”.

[00:22:59]

Meriel:

There was no official fire brigade at the time so people would have just worn their ordinary clothes really. So, no big protective coats and helmets like our firefighters have today.

Something’s just binged in my head! One of the questions was, “Did women fight in the fire?” from earlier on and I’ve just remembered - In Samuel Pepys’ diary, he talks about an outbreak by Bishopsgate and men and women helped him put out the fire there but he said that women would scold for drink so basically they were saying that they would only put out the fire if they were paid in beer I think.

[00:23:38]

Marina:

Wow, very interesting there.

Connected to this, so you’ve said there wasn’t a real fire brigade in the beginning of The Great Fire or when The Great Fire happened. Heather asks, “Did The Great Fire lead to the start of the fire brigade?”.

[00:23:55]

Meriel:

Well indirectly. So about 14 years after the fire, companies were set up to give fire insurance for houses and as part of the insurance cover they also provided firefighting services. But these are private companies who were providing firefighting services and it actually takes 200 years before the London Fire Brigade is formally set up, so it takes a long time.

[00:24:23]

Marina:

So, a very important event I suppose. Getting things to start happening.

Meriel:

Yes.

[00:24:34]

Marina:

We have a question from Clare about, “How much land did the fire actually cover?”.

[00:24:40]

Meriel:

It’s 436 acres, I don’t know what that is in square miles unfortunately but it was about a quarter of the size of London at the time.

[00:24:52]

Marina:

Crazy! Very... again a huge event.

Meriel:

Yeah.

[00:24:57]

Marina:

Now obviously with that whole part of London being destroyed - we’ve got time for just one more question - and this one is actually about the people who were made homeless so Sharmin and Ilhaam would like to know, “Who provided the camps for the people whose houses burnt down, how did they get food and drink?”.

[00:25:18]

Meriel:

So, people camped in the fields and they sort of created their own sheds and tents to live in out of things from their house and stuff that they could find. The King ordered special market places to be set up so that people could buy bread because lots of the shops would have burnt down so there wasn’t actually as many places as there had been before to actually buy food. So special market places were set up. But there wasn’t a huge amount of help really. There wasn’t the sort of emergency response system that we have today for things like that.

[00:25:57]

Marina:

Wow, well we covered a lot there! So, thank you so much, Meriel.

Sadly, that is all we have time to ask Meriel today, but thank you so much for all of your excellent questions and we have had a lot!

[00:26:01]

Meriel:

Yes, they were really, really good questions.

[00:26:10]

Marina:

Meriel will be on Facebook until 3pm and will do her very best to answer any questions from the comments which we couldn’t answer live.

But for now... last week we set you the challenge of drawing pictures about why the fire got so bad. We won't have time to show all of them, so here are just a few of your fantastic drawings and I wonder if you can spot yours?

[00:27:11]

Meriel:

Really amazing pictures there! And now it’s time for your challenge for this week which is to:

Think of five things that are precious to you and gather them in your home or draw a picture of them and ask the people you live with to do it too and when you’ve finished gathering all your items together or finished drawing them, take some time to explain to each other why you chose those things. And let us know on Facebook what you chose!

[00:27:33]

Marina:

And that's it! So, thank you so much for joining us again today and for all of the outstanding questions and thoughts which you’ve shared with us. You'll be able to find the challenge which Meriel described, watch a recording of today's stream and tell us what you thought of it on our website at museumoflondon.org.uk/fire.

We hope you’ll join us again next week, same time, as you’ll get a new tour and another chance to ask us questions to Meriel.

[00:28:07]

Marina:

Next week we'll be talking all about what happened after the fire, including what it meant for Londoners and how it changed the city. We’ll have some time to share some more challenges for you, will you be able to guess what objects are from the fire?

We can’t wait to see you then. And if you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have, remember to share it with your friends and family and see you next time.

Goodbye!

[00:28:30]

Bye, bye!

[stream ends]

The Great Fire of London Live Stream Part 2

Explore how people reacted and the equipment used to put the fire out.

Watch now