{"id":1340,"date":"2020-04-06T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T09:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2020-04-01T12:13:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T12:13:40","slug":"1340","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/2020\/04\/06\/1340\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arrival of the Black Death in Dorset"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current coronavirus pandemic has brought home to us all how fragile human health can be and also how our lifestyles and assumptions can be completely disrupted by an event of this type.<\/p>\n

Dorset History Centre holds over 1,000 years of records relating to our county and we thought that it would be appropriate to consider how a previous era coped in an era of extreme stress and turbulence linked to the outbreak of a previously unknown disease.<\/p>\n

To do this, we asked recent DHC employee Dr Mark Forrest, an expert on the Black Death, to provide us with an overview of how Dorset coped with a pandemic situation nearly 700 years ago…<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

In 1348 two ships … landed at Melcombe in Dorset a little before Midsummer. In them were sailors … infected with an unheard of epidemic illness called pestilence. They infected the men of Melcombe, who were the first to be infected in England. The first inhabitants to die from the illness of pestilence did so on the Eve of St John the Baptist [23 June], after being ill for three days at most.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chronicle of the Fransiscan Friars at King’s Lynn<\/em><\/p>\n

When the plague arrived in Dorset in 1348 it was a new and unexpected crisis, rather like the arrival of Covid-19. At the time it was called the pestilence and nobody knew where it had come from, how it spread and how it might be cured. Now we know it was the pathogen yersina pestis<\/em>, commonly called the bubonic plague, which still periodically jumps the species barrier from rodents to humans in places as far afield as China, India, Peru, the western United States and Madagascar. Although the plague is easily cured with antibiotics it still kills around a hundred people each year in remote areas.<\/p>\n

When it arrived in Dorset in 1348 the plague spread quickly, along the coast and up the river valleys. Its progress may be plotted by the appointments of extraordinary numbers of parish priests to replace those who had died. During the month of November the bishop in Salisbury appointed new priests on twenty-two different days: for parishioners who could not cure their bodies the cure of their souls was the most important concern.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Gillingham Manor court roll<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Going to church attendance did not help to flatten the curve. Nor did the attendance of heads of household at the regular three weekly manor court; the medieval equivalent of a parish council meeting. At these courts the lord of the manor’s steward recorded the deaths of his tenants, their heriots (death duties) and the new tenant who took over their property. At Gillingham in north Dorset there is a particularly good set of manor court records and recording that around 140 of the 300 tenants died during the outbreak, with a further twenty deaths among the new tenants. The deaths began in October 1348, reached a sharp peak between November and January 1349 and had returned to normal levels by the end of March.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Graph showing the deaths of tenants in Gillingham manor, 1348-1349. In the fourteenth century there was no concept of social distancing which might have flattened the curve.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Gillingham community held together, they were lucky that several of the steward, bailiff and a couple of older tenants survived to provide leadership. But the plague returned again thirteen years later and fresh outbreaks every ten or twenty years meant that the population levels never recovered. Across Dorset labour intensive arable farming gave way to an increase in the number of sheep.<\/p>\n

Throughout its history Dorset has suffered from outbreaks of diseases such as plague, typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis. Most have left traces in the parish and borough records of individual communities. Plague years and outbreaks of other diseases such as cholera can be identified by increased numbers of deaths in the parish registers. The development of public responses such as the introduction of quarantine periods can be found in the court records.<\/p>\n

\"\"
15 July 1625
Upon this present day it was and is agreed and ordered by a general consent of mayor, aldermen, bailiffs and capital and principal burgesses of this borough and town of Waymouthe and Malcomb Regis that the barque whereof William Langer is master under God which lately came from London shall not land any part of the goods now on board of her within the liberties of this town until the same be thoroughly aired and it is also further agreed and ordered by the like consent that as well the said William Langer as all other masters of ships, barques which shall come from London with any goods brought from thence at any time during the time of God’s visitation of plague in London and shall give occasion whereby by there shall be a watch and ward appointed and set for the keeping of them out of the town, shall bear and pay the same watch and ward at his and their own proper costs and charges.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

—<\/p>\n

An article on the Black Death in Dorset, by Dr Mark Forrest, focusing on the bishop’s registers and Gillingham manor appeared in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, volume 131, 2010, together with articles on Edward Jenner and Dorset’s role in early vaccination, Henry Moule and the prevention of cholera in Fordington and the development of public sanitation infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current coronavirus pandemic has brought home to us all how fragile human health can be and also how our lifestyles and assumptions can be completely disrupted by an event of this type. Dorset History Centre holds over 1,000 years of records relating to our county and we thought that it would be appropriate to… Read more The Arrival of the Black Death in Dorset<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1892,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,11],"tags":[82,144,143,147,146,145],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1892"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}