Plague victim list. Front cover of a collection of the Bills of Mortality written during the 1665 plague of London, England. It lists all of the 68,596 deaths that occurred from bubonic plague in that year. The worst pandemic of bubonic plague, the Black Death, occurred between 1346 and 1353, when a quarter of the population of Europe died. Extensive control measures, directed against rats as well as their fleas which carry the disease- causing bacteria Yersinia pestis, have banished the plague from Europe. However there are still regions of the world where the disease occurs and, at intervals, breaks out in an epidemic.