Tudor London Lockdown & Social Distancing During the Black Death

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MyQul

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"In one sense what is happening to us at present is unprecedented: a pandemic that is simultaneously shutting down nations all over the world. At the local level, however, this was business as usual for Tudor and Stuart England. There, an epidemic would arrive in every city, town and village, about once each generation, and kill a fifth to a quarter of the population. There was no safe season: the two greatest scourges were bubonic plague, a bacillus carried by fleas which normally lived on rats, striking in summer and autumn, and influenza viruses, which flourished in winter and spring. Each usually took three to six months to work through a community, though sometimes a strain would bed in and produce a twin-peak flare-up in successive years. In those times, there was no understanding of the causes of these diseases, and no public health service, but other factors were very similar to the present day."

https://www.idler.co.uk/article/tudor-lock-down/
"Boccaccio’s Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories, a kind of Arabian Nights for the West. The setup may well be familiar to you: it is 1348 and the plague is ravaging Italy. A group of bright young Florentine women call a meeting in a church and decide to retreat to a pretty farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside, with some well chosen male companions in tight leggings. Here they tell extremely bawdy stories to one another

The story-telling is preceded by Boccaccio’s account of the effect of the plague on everyday life in Florence. Remember that in 1348, Florence was the New York of the world: it was way ahead of everyone else in art, architecture, textiles and banking. Boccaccio himself was the son of a banker and when young spent what he later called “six wasted years” learning the trade in his father’s Naples office. He’d always wanted to be a writer.

Boccaccio says he was present during the plague in Florence, which killed at least two thirds of the city’s 100,000 inhabitants. The disease was so virulent, he says, that a pig which sniffed an infected rag would drop down dead immediately

https://www.idler.co.uk/article/social-distancing-during-the-plague-in-florence/
 
In Wrexham we have a place called Bryn y Cabbanau...which translates to cabins on the hill....which is where plague sufferes were isolated.
 
In Wrexham we have a place called Bryn y Cabbanau...which translates to cabins on the hill....which is where plague sufferes were isolated.

All over London there are/were plague pits where the victims of the plague were buried

Here's a nice interactive map

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/LondonPlaguePits/
To bring things up to date I read about how in N. Ireland they're digging "preparatory" graves for C-19 victims- Grim!

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...ug-in-northern-ireland-cemetery-39092735.html
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In my town there is a place called Outcast its where lepers were sent.


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We passed this sign whilst out walking during our Cumbrian holiday. It's the name of an area, like a hamlet, which is certainly not big enough to be a village, and is now part of Ulverston. According to a local information leaflet, it was once the place where lepers were sent – cast out from the community where they lived before. However, there are no further details, and I'm having problems trying to find anything out, so I may contact the tourist office and see if they can recommend a local historian who may be able to help.

http://chriscross-thebooktrunk.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-place-where-lepers-were-outcast.html
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Ulverston....is that hill with the monument thing on the top near there?

Yes that’s the place. My grandparents used to live there but never heard of Outcast before although must have walked through it dozens of times.
 
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I been up that. Also when things get something like again...worth stopping off for a Roy's ice-cream.
Stopped in a great holiday let right on the sea front near there... can't remember exactly...
 
I been up that. Also when things get something like again...worth stopping off for a Roy's ice-cream.
Stopped in a great holiday let right on the sea front near there... can't remember exactly...

Bardsea Beach on the coast road to barrow in Furness.


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