History of London people, which was one fifth of the population. Samuel Pepys chronicled the epidemic in his diary. On 4 September 1665 he wrote "I have stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of them about 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells." The Great Plague was immediately followed by another catastrophe, albeit one which helped to put an end to the plague. On the Sunday, 2 September 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out at one o'clock in the morning at a bakery in Pudding Lane in
Pudding Lane by the Company of Bakers in 1986, commemorates the fire. According to the chronicler John Stow, it is named after the "puddings" (a medieval word for offal) which would fall from the carts coming down the lane from the butchers in Eastcheap as they headed for the waste barges on the River Thames. In Stow's words, "the Butchers of Eastcheape have their skalding House for Hog there, and their puddings with other filth of Beasts, are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames." The original name of the lane was "Offal Pudding Lane", which changed to