Victims of the London plague of 1665. Front cover of a collection of the 'Bills of Mortality', written during the 1665 plague that occurred in London, England. The other titles are 'Memento Mori' and 'London's Dreadful Visitation'. Compiled by the parish clerks of London, this report 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 outbreaks and epidemics of the disease occur.