St Magnus-the-Martyr Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work "A Journal of the Plague Year" records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church". Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus,
Great Fire of 1873 Italianate-style buildings built between 1878 and 1887. In December 1872, 8 months prior, there had been another fire which started in a Chinese laundry facility. This fire destroyed several blocks in the areas of Front and Morrison streets. The official cause of the 1873 fire is undetermined, however many people of the time believed it was started by anti-Chinese arsonists. The areas of the 1872 fire had yet to be rebuilt and acted as a buffer for the fire of 1873. Great Fire of 1873 The Great Fire of 1873 was a major fire which swept through the downtown of