E.Knowles

The Black Death in England – a Catastrophe in History

The Black Death is one of the most famous pandemics in history. It conjors up images of rats, fleas, black pus and death. The numbers are staggering: 

50 million people died in Europe over three or four years
That equates to 60% of the population!
3.2 million people died in England alone!

For parallels between the Black Death and modern day, check out my post on the Black Death, the Great Plague and the Coronavirus crisis of 2020.

What was the Black Death? How was it spread? How did people think it was caused at the time? Was it really caused by the rats?

How did it get to England?

The image shows the paths the plague took across Europe. Many historians agree that it started in the Far East and travelled along the shipping trade routes into Europe. It arrived in England at the port city of Weymouth in 1348.

The plague quickly spread among the population of Europe and England. It spread rapidly and indiscriminately with all walks of life affected in some form. The people of England were paralysed with fear, having never seen it before.

Medieval Causes of the Black Death

In an age before science and microbes and bacteria, people had to find other ways to explain the seemingly impossible situation they were in. These broadly fell into 2 categories, religious and supernatural (things not of this world), natural (things OF this world). For ease of reference, I have detailed the explanations in a table below.

Religious and Supernatural CausesNatural Causes
Many believed the Black Death was God’s punishment for the sins of man. He was wiping clean the world like he had with the great flood and Noah. The thinking around natural causes was attributed to impure air. This was called ‘Miasma’ and it was thought that breathing in the unclean air would corrupt the body and causes illness. People thought this impure air had come from poisonous fumes from an earthquake or volcano.
In 1345, people noticed an unusual positioning of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Astrologers interpreted this as a sign that either something wonderful or terrible was going to happen. When the plague hit three years later, clearly it had been foretold. In Europe, many people blamed the Jewish population for the plague. Rumours (incorrectly) started to spread that the wells had been poisoned so many Jewish communities were attacked and driven from their homes. Of course, the plague still ravaged on. In England, the Jewish population had been expelled one hundred years earlier, so this was not commonly believed.

What were the symptoms of the Black Death?

The main sympoms of the Black Death were as follows:

  • Fever
  • Chest pains and breathing troubles
  • Sneezing and coughing up blood
  • Boils and Black Buboes (swellings) in the armpits and groin area

Cures were pretty wacky in the medieval times. One cure was to shave a chicken’s bottom and place it on the buboes under the armpit. The thinking was the plague would then transfer to the chicken and you would be healed.

How was the Black Death Spread?

Up until a few years ago, the most commonly accepted theory on the rapid spread of the disease was fleas on the rats which infiltrated the streets of Europe and beyond. The plague itself it caused by the bacteria ‘Yersinia pestis’ which sat inside the flea’s stomachs. The question that we are still trying to get definite answer for is how exactly did it spread to humans?

Three diseases in one

When we think of the Black Death, we tend to think of the bubonic plague which causes the nasty black buboes under the armpit and in the groin area. However, did you know that the Black Death actually consisted of 3 diseases at the same time?

The mortality rate of the three diseases of the Black Death. Image Credit to BBC Bitesize.

The above image shows the three diseases caused by the plague bacteria. As you can see, the mortality rate for the bubonic plague is 50%, but the mortality for the Pneumoic Plague is much higher at 90%. Researchers and scientists now think the majority of the deaths were caused by this disease. In 2014, Public Health England researchers argued that

"for the Black Death to have spread so quickly and killed so many victims with such devastating speed, it would have to have been airborne. Therefore, rather than bubonic plague, which is transmitted to humans through bites from infected rat fleas (and then can be transmitted between humans, according to some research), they concluded that this must have been a pneumonic plague that made its way into the lungs of the infected and spread through coughs and sneezes."  Click to view source

So there we go! Now you can impress all your friends about your up to date knowledge on one of the most infamous plagues in history. And remember, try not to blame the rats!

Sources (because I don’t know everything)


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