The spread of the disease was too rapid for rats to have been the carriers (and there were probably not enough of them anyway). It is estimated that between half and two-thirds of London's population of 60,000 died. Less than ten years later London merchants claimed that a third of all property in the city was empty.
Panicked people rushed to make their wills; as many were being made in a week as in a normal year. It is likely that the rich died as much as the poor, because they lived and worked so closely packed together - as still they did in Dickens's London.
At least some things have finally improved.
