A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of PlagueCreighton, Charles
History
A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague
Creighton, Charles
Epidemics -- Great Britain -- History
for some two, three or four weeks, and gradually declined. A maximum of
200 in a day, in the cemetery which would have at that stage received
nearly all the dead, would mean a plague-mortality from first to last, or
an epidemic curve, not unlike that of the London plague of 1563, for which
we have the exact weekly totals[240]: the five successive weeks at the
height of that plague (Sept. 3 to Oct. 8) produced mortalities of 1454,
1626, 1372, 1828 and 1262; and the epidemic throughout its whole curve of
intensity from June to December caused a mortality of 17,404. If
Avesbury’s figures had been at all near the mark, the Black Death in
London would have been a twenty-thousand plague, or to make a most liberal
allowance for burials in other cemeteries than Manny’s when the epidemic
was at its worst, it might have been a thirty-thousand plague. Even at the
smaller of those estimates it would have been a much more severe
visitation upon the London of Edward III. than the plague with 17,404
deaths was upon the London of the 5th of Elizabeth.
The mortality of London in the Black Death has been usually estimated at a
far higher figure than 20,000 or 30,000. There was a brass fixed to a
stone monument in the Charterhouse churchyard (Manny’s cemetery), bearing
an inscription which was read there both by Stow and Camden. Stow gives
the Latin words, of which the following is a translation: “Anno Domini
1349, while the great pestilence was reigning, this cemetery was
consecrated, wherein, and within the walls of the present monastery, were
buried more than fifty thousand bodies of the dead, besides many more from
that time to the present, on whose souls may God have mercy. Amen.” Camden
says the number on the brass was forty thousand, but his memory had
probably misled him[241]. This has been accepted as if trustworthy,
apparently because it was inscribed upon a monument in the cemetery; and
it has been argued that if one cemetery received 50,000 corpses in the
plague, the other cemeteries and parish churchyards of London would have
together received as many more, so that the whole mortality of London
would have been 100,000[242].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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