The Bubonic Plague Pandemic of 1348

Walsham le Willows today

The bubonic plague pandemic of 1348 England killed off a third of its population. As many as three generations of men were killed, allowing a single male heir, sometimes a woman, to inherit property from multiple peasant farms, making them more economically sound and increasing their wealth.

The bubonic plague was caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, previously unknown to 14th century English. The black ‘buboes,’ which were used to describe the pestilence in the 17^th century as the Black Death, emerged in the area close to where the bacterium entered the body. Contact with donated clothes after the death of a family member spread the plague like wildfire.

There were three types of plague, based on the route of infection:

1.      Bubonic plague was spread by fleas from small animals and body fluids from dead ones – 30-90% of those infected die within ten days unless treated with antibiotics.

2.      Septicemic plague was spread by infected blood from flea bites.

3.      Pneumonic plague was caused by exposure to the cough (airborne droplets) of an infected individual or may have been the result of the initial flea bite and then following septicemic plague infection. This type is almost always deadly unless treated with antibiotics.

After the plague ended in 1349, the nobility could not find people to fill positions [wages rose to such an extent that a law was passed to convince peasants to accept wages from the pre-plague period; it did not work] and were forced to offer incentives never before given to the peasant class. For example, records reveal that a peasant was seen plowing the land in noblemen’s attire, with holes and tears, but a nobleman’s clothing nevertheless, as an incentive to do the work.

In the village of Walsham, about 100 miles north of London and 26 miles west from the port of Ipswich, the Black Death [the name was not used until seventeenth century] arrived in 1349. Out of the 1,200 residents on tax rolls, half died from the plague. Expecting the Black Death to arrive, records show that some peasants decided to go to the pub and get drunk instead of showing up for work. They knew death was imminent, why not have fun one last time?

In one family, William Cranmer’s family, the tax records show that three generations died within a couple of weeks, the grandfather, the father, and the brother of Olivia Cranmer. She was mentioned previously in tax records as having had to pay a few shillings in penalty taxes for having given birth to a child out of wedlock. The landlord of the manor had her married to a landed farmer named Robert, who also died of the plague.

The death records from the bubonic plague were accurate because each peasant had to pay a death tax, i.e. a horse, a cow, a yew, or whatever animal the family had.

As a survivor, Olivia inherited a total of 40 acres of land. But how was tax on the property going to be paid since women were not allowed to own property? To fix this problem, the lord and the tax collector allowed Olivia to become a landowner legally, thus being able to pay taxes on her 40-acre farm.

Olivia lived comfortably into her sixties, a remarkable age in medieval times, but especially since she survived the bubonic plague. She was in good condition financially, as she received a pension.

Many women in this period benefited from the Black Death financially. They were even allowed to become apprentices in different professions, traditionally only performed by men.

Waves of subsequent bubonic plagues followed, and it will be 300 years before the population of England grew to the pre-pandemic numbers of 1348.

The Cranmer Farm still exists today in the village of Walsham and farming continues on the same acreage as it was done during the medieval period by William Cranmer when the plague hit in 1349 and claimed the lives of so many of his family members.

Draconian Quarantine Now and Then

The Romans did not know about bacteria or what caused diseases such as malaria and dysentery, but they made sure that their soldiers were exposed to fresh, clean air and water, and the military castra were located far away from such sources of “miasmas.”

In the first century B.C., a writer named Varro spoke about the “minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, float through the air, enter the body through the mouth and nose, causing diseases.” Vegetius suggested in the 4^th century A.D. that castra must be carefully located away from swamps and daily exercise does the body “more good than doctors.”

Through their health and engineering practices, scholars believe that the Romans probably prevented many deadly epidemics. On the battlefield the medici, with experience acquired from the Greeks who practiced far superior medical practices, tended to wounded soldiers.

A descriptive account survives of an officer who fought during the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.). He wrote, “There was not one of us, not of those above or below rank, who fell ill without having his health and welfare taken care of by Tiberius [future emperor] with as much care as if this was his chief occupation despite his other weighty responsibilities. There was a horse-drawn vehicle for all who needed it, his own litter was at the disposal of all, and I among others have enjoyed its use.  Now his physician, now his kitchen, now his bathing brought for his personal use ministered to the comfort of all who were sick.”

Evidence dug up in Scotland, showed a hospital, valetudinaria, built during the Roman occupation, which had proper drainage, a sewage system and was divided into wards which indicate that the Romans were knowledgeable of the value of isolating the sick in order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. It is important to note that the sick were isolated.

Putting people in quarantine, a word derived from Italian (via Latin) “quaranta giorni,” 40 days, started as a method to prevent the spread of the Black Death in fourteenth century Europe, protecting coastal cities. According to the CDC, “ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.” http://cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html

Despite such quarantine measures, 25 million people are said to have died in Europe within four years (1347-1351) of the plague, a quarter of Europe’s population.

Isolating the sick in places where the plague flared up or self-isolating healthy people from the public saved Pope Clement and large areas in Poland where quarantine was imposed. When the plague hit Milan, the archbishop ordered the first houses to be walled up and the dead, the sick, and the healthy, to be entombed within, halting the spread of the plague in his city.

But the plague recurred in 1665 London. The diary of Samuel Pepys describes the thousands of victims in this Black Death outbreak. Nobody understood how the disease spread until the twentieth century. The Londoners solution to dealing with their plague outbreak was to kill dogs and cats, the very animals who could have controlled the black rat (Rattus rattus) population that carried the plague-infested fleas with the bacillus Pasteurella pestis.

In 1967 when quarantine responsibility in the U.S. fell on the CDC, there were 55 quarantine stations and 500 staff members with quarantine stations located at every port, international airport, and major border crossings.

According to its website, by 1995 only seven quarantine locations remained but with the acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003, the CDC expanded to 18 stations with more than 90 field employees.

Quarantinable diseases listed in Executive Order 13295 were “cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, and Crimean-Congo, South American, and others not yet isolated or named), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is a disease associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, transmitted from person to person predominantly by the aerosolized or droplet route, and, if spread in the population, would have severe public health consequences.” Measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox were not included in the list. 03-8832.pdf (govinfo.gov)

The Executive Order 13375 of 2005 amended the list by adding “influenza caused by novel or reemergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic.” https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2005.html#13375

Healthy people who were asked to wear a mask for 14 days (to flatten the curve) back in mid-March are finding themselves ten months later facing new draconian orders from some state governments to not only wear masks in perpetuity, but with more restrictions of small and medium size businesses, gyms, churches, schools, stadiums, cinemas, theaters, and any venues involving more than 10 people. Some states went as far as mandating fines for people having more than 6 family members in their homes.

Furthermore, there are cancellations of national holidays and the potential of being required to carry a vaccination passport for a vaccine that has been hurriedly developed at warp speed. The  media-anointed president-elect wants to lock down the entire country until such time that nobody will die of Covid-19. 

If we are to believe the inflated and manipulated statistics purveyed by the media, casualties have dropped significantly for many diseases but have sky-rocketed for Covid-19.

Nursing home patients, the first required to take the COVID-19 vaccine, are currently prisoners in their respective facilities, with no way to exit or see their families, get a haircut, or see their doctors outside of the facility unless they are moved each time into an isolation room with their personal belongings for 14 days, then moved back to their private rooms once the clear is given.

It does not matter that they have been tested numerous times and were proven COVID-19-negative, the imprisonment continues for their own good.

One can argue that jail inmates have more rights and freedom than the elderly in nursing homes ruled by draconian measures. One can also argue that this imprisonment is akin to the Archbishop of Milan entombing the healthy and the sick during the Black Plague. How else can one describe the total physical isolation and mental desperation of patients in nursing homes where even Face Time with loved ones on a cellular phone is restricted to 15 minutes a week unless they are in isolation in which case, even that is taken away?