The Plague Strikes!

There were lots and lots of different beliefs about the plague; people were so scared because they weren’t sure what caused it.  Some believed it was a punishment from God, some believed that foreigners or those who followed a different religion had poisoned the wells, some thought that bad air was responsible, and some thought the position of the planets had caused the plague.  All these beliefs led to some strange attempts at explaining the plague and some even stranger cures.

The Black Death was worse in the towns and cities.  The plague found an ideal spot when it reached London.   In 1348, London was one of the largest cities in Europe.  Even before the plague, London was full of diseases.  Dead animals and vegetables rotted together on the streets.  The middle of the street was the place where people emptied their chamber pots and buckets of night soil.  Privies hung over the rivers and streams, or there were cesspools at the backs of the houses where the sewage seeped into the wells and drinking water.   Even the way the city was built helped to spread the plague through overcrowding.  Families slept in one room, often with people sharing beds.   Sometimes there were no beds and a dozen people could be found asleep on a straw covered mud floor.  Animals slept with them too.  

Rats loved it.  The black rats loved the filth and the warmth. They loved narrow streets with houses crammed together.  They feasted on the rubbish thrown out of windows.  

London had the most deaths in Britain.  Too many to bury in a coffin, the bodies were just tipped into huge pits.  Two new cemeteries had to be made outside the city.  People were used to death in the Middle Ages.  Babies often died and people were thought old when they were 45; a poor harvest meant starvation and the slightest cut could mean an infection that led to death.  But the Black Death was the worst thing people had ever known.

An eyewitness account by the Italian poet Boccaccio:

“Some shut themselves away and waited for death, others rioted from tavern to tavern.  The sickness fell upon all classes without distinction.  The rich passed out of this world without a single person to comfort them.  The poor fell sick by the thousand and most of them died.  The terror was such that brother even fled from brother, wife from husband, yea the mother from her own child.”

How many died?  It is difficult to know exactly, there were no standard registers for deaths at the time.  The Roman Catholic Church was the only place that kept accurate records, with Bishops noting when new priests were appointed.  In many areas half the churches had new priests in 1348-49.  In some monasteries nearly all the monks died.  This could be because so many priests visited the sick to comfort them, so they were likely to get infected.  Once the disease got into the monastery, it spread quickly.  Historians estimate that about one third or more of the population of England and Wales died.  This would be over one million people.

So many deaths meant that life changed for the people who survived.  The biggest changes were on the farms and in the country side.  For the peasants, things were getting better.  The lords needed them to work the land but there were less people available.  Laborers could ask for higher pay and get it.  Wages trebled, villains had a chance to break free and earn money by working for someone else.  

Your task:  You are a visitor to London in 1348 sent by your family to sale their excess crop at market.  Write a letter home describing the city and the early stages of the plague.  Be sure to include how you are protecting yourself.