Coronavirus watch: lessons from past plagues, my interview with Radio Cornwall

What can the plagues of the past tell us about coronavirus? The dreadful Black Death, that killed around 40% of England's population; bubonic plague that returned not just in a second wave, but time and time again over three centuries; the mysterious sweating sickness that nearly killed Anne Boleyn before she married Henry VIII; cholera - a scourge in the 19th century.

You can find my interview with Debbie McCrory of BBC Radio Cornwall here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C2SLrEEkds&t=103s

Coronavirus watch: second waves - a lesson from history

The Black Death, probably bubonic plague, was the deadliest epidemic in British history, carrying off up to 40 per cent of the population. What a relief it must have been when it finally petered out in the early 1350s.

But in 1361, the disease was back! In what became known as the ‘children’s plague.’ While the Black Death killed more older people, this epidemic was especially hard on those born since the earlier plague had departed. It was less devastating than the Black Death, but it still carried off perhaps one person in five.

There were another four serious plague outbreaks before the end of the century, and the disease struck regularly over the next 300 years so that overall it reduced Britain’s population by maybe half.

All sorts of cures and preventions were tried - bleeding, carrying nosegays of flowers or herbs, sealing windows with waxed cloth, the constant burning of aromatic woods or powders. But with the disease being passed on by fleas of the black rat, none of them worked. The best plan was probably to run for it, away from the towns and cities, as many of the wealthy did, but even that wasn’t foolproof, though, as generally happens, the rich survived better than the poor.

For more, see my book A Disastrous History of Britain (The History Press)

Coronavirus watch: Lockdown - 1665-style

During the Great Plague of 1665, which killed perhaps one person in five in London, lockdowns were a bit more brutal. People found to be infected were locked up in their houses with their families.

In its early stages, the government also closed ale houses and brought in some restrictions on street-vendors. But the death toll grew alarmingly, even though there were suspicions that many plague deaths were being attributed to other causes.

The more prosperous folk were relieved that the disease seemed to be hitting only the poorest districts, and in May, London theatres were still packed. But as more and more people died, in June, warders were put around the worst-hit area to try to stop the inhabitants getting out. Still the disease spread, and the King and court upped sticks.

By the end of June, the theatres were closed, and the streets were jammed with coaches as most of the aristocracy fled, though the Lord Mayor stayed, conducting business from inside a glass case.

In July, the disease really took hold, with more than 5,500 deaths, and the diarist Samuel Pepys (pictured) set his affairs in order, mindful that ‘a man cannot depend on living two days’. August and September were the worst months. London was a ghost town, with only ‘poor wretches’ on the street, and Pepys noting that he could walk the length of usually-bustling Lombard Street, and see only 20 people.

By September, most of the doctors had gone, the Royal College of Physicians was deserted, and there was not a lot of sympathy when it had its valuable treasures stolen. The authorities were supposed to provide food for those shut up in their houses, but by now the money had run out, victims were beginning to resist, and the practice had to be abandoned.

The usual sounds of one of the world’s great cities had been replaced by the endless tolling of bells and the rumbling of the carts collecting corpses to the cry of ‘bring out your dead!’ Grass grew in the streets, and Pepys lamented ‘how empty and melancholy’ they were, while a puritan preacher said that every day he heard of the death of at least one person he knew.

For more, see London’s Disasters (The History Press).

The plagues of Britain: the Black Death

The Black Death has the dubious distinction of being in all likelihood the worst disaster in British history. Probably a lethal cocktail of bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic plague (though not all historians agree), it carried off perhaps a third of the population after coming to England from the East in 1348.

Spread by fleas carried on the black rat, and perhaps originating in Central Asia, it was first noticed in the West Country, and may have arrived at Melcombe Regis, now effectively part of Weymouth. Across the country, so many priests died that there were not enough to hear people’s final confessions, so the church said people about to die could unburden themselves to a lay person, and in extremis, ‘even to a woman’.

One of the consequences of the appalling mortality was a dramatic decline in respect for authority – particularly that of the church. The clergy often banged on about how the plague was God’s punishment for people’s bad behaviour, but the line did not go down very well, and at Yeovil, for example, the local bishop found himself besieged in his church by an angry crowd armed with bows and arrows.

London was by far the biggest city in the country, and there, as in other places, the numbers of dead overwhelmed the authorities, and many bodies were just shovelled into mass graves. Food supplies started to dry up as carters refused to come to the city, and Londoners had to go out into the countryside to search for supplies. This lack of social distancing helped spread the pestilence.

For more, see my book A Disastrous History of Britain (The History Press).

Coronavirus's ancestors: the plagues of Ancient Britain

Many epidemics must have afflicted Ancient Britain without leaving any mark on history. Perhaps the first that any historians speak of with any confidence came in AD 166 when Roman Britain, particularly London, may have been attacked by the Plague of Galen (named after the physician who described it), brought back by soldiers who had been fighting in the East.

It could have been smallpox or measles. No one is sure, but some historians believe it played a part in a major decline in London’s population, exacerbated by a great fire or a series of fires.

Nearly six centuries later, the ‘father of English history’, the Venerable Bede (pictured above), a monk in Jarrow, recorded a number of epidemics. Were they bubonic plague or some other disease? Again no one really knows.

Bede wrote of a sudden ‘severe plague’ falling on the Britons in 426-7. It ‘destroyed such numbers of them, that the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead.’ In 664, he says that ‘a sudden pestilence…..depopulated the southern coasts of Britain’ and then spread right up to Northumbria where it ‘ravaged the country far and near, and destroyed a great multitude of men.’

This was such a shock, according to Bede, that it helped to revive heathenism, as many ‘forsook the mysteries of the Christian faith and turned apostate’. The next year, pestilence ravaged Essex, and in 681, a ‘grievous mortality ran through many provinces of Britain’.

For more, see my book, A Disastrous History of Britain (The History Press).

What was the Black Death?

Did bubonic plague really cause the Black Death? This was one of the questions tackled in BBC TV’s Decoding Disaster, which went out under the Timewatch banner.

What is certain is that the epidemic was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, disaster in history, killing perhaps 75 million people in Europe and Asia from 1346 to 1353 – 30 to 40 per cent of the population. The conventional explanation is that it was bubonic plague, carried by the fleas of the black rat, along with pneumonic and septicaemic plague which could be transmitted from person to person.

Sceptics, though, have suggested there were just not enough rats to spread the disease on the scale that happened, so other ideas have been suggested – notably anthrax or some kind of haemorrhagic plague, like Ebola. Others maintain that with a death toll on this scale, a number of different diseases must have been raging at the same time.

At the time, top academics at Paris University came up with their own explanation: a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius on 20 March 1345, but they were humble enough to acknowledge that some things were ‘hidden from even the most highly trained intellects.’

For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World. See also my posts of 19 January and 31 March 2009, 1 September 2011 and 17 December 2013.

Return of the Black Death

Reports today that the “Black Death” – bubonic plague – has broken out in a training camp for al-Qaeda insurgents in Algeria. The disease, which swept through Europe and Asia starting in the early 1330’s, was perhaps the biggest disaster in human history, wiping out around a third of the population in the areas it attacked. It reached Britain in the summer of 1348, allegedly first appearing at Melcombe Regis in Dorset.

With death rates at this level, it is hardly surprising that many people thought they were witnessing the end of the world. A dying Irish monk compiled an account of the epidemic, saying he had written it just in case “any man survive.” Nowadays some scientists question whether the Black Death was actually bubonic plague, and argue it may have been some other viral infection.

Whatever the truth of that, the plague lives on. In 2006, an outbreak claimed at least 50 lives in the chaos of the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and there are fears it may soon appear in Zimbabwe.