There
can’t be many outbreaks of disease which are gleefully given a
plaque and a place in a town’s guide book. This, though, is the
case at Weymouth. It was here that the disease, which just happened to be called the
Black Death, first entered Britain. It spread rapidly, carrying away up to half of the country's inhabitants and
causing political repercussions which were to last for centuries.
Melcombe
Regis, as the area on the far side of the harbour is known,
formed a bustling community carrying out a thriving trade with the continent.
Then, in the middle of the 14th century the following short paragraph heralded
the coming catyclism...
Combined
with the insanitary conditions that people lived in, the plague
quickly took hold. Soon Geoffrey the Baker in the Chronicon Angliae
was writing:
“....in
Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite
void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.”
A
contemporary described it thus:
“Woe is me of the shilling in the arm-pit; it is seething, terrible, wherever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried under the arms, a painful angry knob, a white lump. It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion, a small boil that spares no-one. Great is its seething, like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of an ashy colour. It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste. It is a grievous ornament that breaks out in a rash. The early ornaments of black death.”
“Woe is me of the shilling in the arm-pit; it is seething, terrible, wherever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried under the arms, a painful angry knob, a white lump. It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion, a small boil that spares no-one. Great is its seething, like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of an ashy colour. It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste. It is a grievous ornament that breaks out in a rash. The early ornaments of black death.”
Within
a short time 45% of the population was dead and whole
communities decimated. At a loss to explain what was happening the
population looked for scapegoats most conveniently the Jews who
suffered terrible persecution. At the same time membership of the
Brotherhood of the Flagellants reached an all-time high as many people felt the plague was a direct result of sin.
The pestilence had gradually spread across Europe from China carried by the fleas of the black rat.The Black or Bubonic plague was so named from the buboes or hard painful swellings that affected the victims in the groin, neck and armpits. When they appeared, death was virtually certain, usually within days. As effective medicines were non-existent it was usually a case of hanging a cross around the victim's neck and praying hard.
The pestilence had gradually spread across Europe from China carried by the fleas of the black rat.The Black or Bubonic plague was so named from the buboes or hard painful swellings that affected the victims in the groin, neck and armpits. When they appeared, death was virtually certain, usually within days. As effective medicines were non-existent it was usually a case of hanging a cross around the victim's neck and praying hard.
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| If the patients didn't die from plague doctors made sure they died of fright |
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