Great Fire of London (or Farynor) on Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday, 2 September, and spread rapidly west across the City of London. The major firefighting technique of the time was to create firebreaks by means of demolition; this was critically delayed owing to the indecisiveness of Lord Mayor of London Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm that defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious
Great Fire of London were crowded to bursting point, intermingled with these sources of heat, sparks, and pollution, and their construction increased the fire risk. The typical six- or seven-storey timbered London tenement houses had "jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street, as a contemporary observer put it, with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys; "as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote