An end to decent dying
Eric Christiansen
THE IMPACT OF PLAGUE IN TUDOR AND STUART ENGLAND by Paul Slack
RKP, £25
They used to say that war is the ruin of serious soldiering. Too much disorder, too many accidents. So it could be said of the bubonic plague: it spoilt dying completely.
For it was in the Livid Era, the plague- years from the 14th to 18th centuries, that Europeans devoted more of their genius than ever before to discovering the decent way to die. Indeed, they invested so much of their time, money, art, and intellect in this common enterprise that it became for millions the most reliable and best conducted form of travel they could undertake, with little of the danger, dis- comfort and delay which still attended ordinary locomotion by land and sea.
From the first intimations of restless- ness, whether sickness or senility or bore- dom, the affluent, or merely respectable mortal could call on the services of whole tribes and industries dedicated to the latter end of life. Doctors, wizards, astrologers and nurses were prompt to get the arrange- ments under way, whether by fatal medi- cines, dire prognoses or the shock of their solemn appearances. Civil and ecclesiastic- al lawyers came crowding in for the pains and pleasures of will-making, will-changing and the ultimate exercise of economic power, and then it was the turn of the clergy: serious words, calls to repentance, the healing of the sin-sick soul and the fond farewell to the earthly body by its owner. Outside, the family was waiting. The multitude, as it sometimes was, of kin, friends and neighbours, servants, and even magistrates for the well-connected, the swelling chorus that gave depth, sonority and pathos to the great audience of the sick-room. No words or gestures were ever more closely attended to and reported than the last; and yet at this stage, when life may have been pronounced extinct, the journey had scarcely begun. There was still work for scores, or it might be hundreds of willing hands.
There was laying out, shrouding, lying in private or in public, coffining, watching, wakeing, hearsing, carrying to church, knelling, the celebration of the burial service and the burial itself; and when this curtain fell, another act ensued, with feasts of commemoration and inheritance, the draping and swaddling of men, animals, and things in mourning cloth and the calling and visiting and saluting in the cause of commiseration. Even after six months the act might still be in progress, and when the curtain fell again it would rise to the long, ecstatic finale of artistic remembrance: headstone, plaque, brass, tombstone, tomb, bust, image, mortuary chapel or mausoleum in ascending scale of pomp, with epitaph, elegy and printed sermon in similar gradations of show. And these are only the bare outlines of the business. To say nothing of funeral jewel- lery, of funeral doles, of funeral medals, of hatchments and plumes and epistles of consolation, of a thousand other details.
These were not mediaeval survivals or superstitions. It was 'Early Modern Man' or woman, whether prince or pauper, who elaborated this system of exit; allowing for differences of wealth and climate, its com- plexity and parade were reproduced over a wide range of differing societies, from Palermo to Aberdeen. From the 14th century onwards, Europeans demonstrated their collective vitality in many remarkable ways, but in none were they more exuber- ant than in this.
But there was the plague. It made death squalid, mean and repetitious. It fouled the `lovely appearance of death' with pustules, swellings, sores, and the blue bruise. It reduced the formalities to a few days or hours, spent in a condemned house or a ditch, alone, or with the company of those compelled by law to share the risk of infection, and soon likely to die them- selves. It silenced the last words with a coma. It simplified bequests and wills to deft corpse-robbery by outcasts and offi- cials, the disposal of goods to the burning of them in public. Few were the clergy who came near to these victims before death, or attended even their burials, now reduced to the tipping of unattended corpses into unconsecrated ground. Medicine was use- less. The doctors could not even hasten death with their doses of treacle and recommendations of hilarity as a form of disinfectant. The sick were powerless, dis- honoured and persecuted, and the theory of contagion spread their disgrace to their families, neighbours and even to their trades. The healthy, confronted by the fact of plague, and by the elementary moral duty of tending the sick, took fright in large numbers and fled. There was so much to fear. Not merely a sudden, unexplained and incurable form of disease, since brevity of life and mysterious illness were commonplace; besides, there was no lack of plague-theories and official nostrums. What was truly dreadful was the subversion and mockery of all that was usually done to dignify the final moment, of the pains taken to celebrate death, and prevent him from doing irreparable 11; ral to the community. So plague gave death a bad name, and for over 300 years no Englishman could grow up without expecting to witness or suffer one outbreak or more before be died. The rich were safer, because they were less hospitable to rats, and so less likely to share their fleas. It was not every rat-flea that carried the bacillus, nor every carrier that was dangerous; only those fleas with digestive disorders, who vomited 00 their hosts, were the culprits, and of course all this microscopic squalor was quite invisible and unsuspected for as long as plague reigned. Whether the sickness was transmitted by touch or breath or spittle or gas or by the direct intervention of God was a matter of continual debate in which there could be no convincing vic- tory. The disease was triumphantly cryf tie' and nearly always defeated its enemie • However, the terror and demoralisation it inspired were public nuisances, threaten ing the social order. The way this threat was dealt with by the authorities of Tudor and Stuart England affords an example a the rigours to which even unruly people will submit if really frightened. From 1518 to 1665, various measures were taken by the government to deal with the effects of pestilence, and they all tended to separate by force not the sick from the healthy, but the sick and their households from the healthy. That is, plague-victims and their dependents were boarded up into their locked and marked homes under pain of arrest, or even death' if they emerged before the visitation od• d e ed. Plague-spots were watched by armed guards, and all forms of assembly, even processions and services, were reduced °r banned. Almost any form of misbehavour or immorality was apt to be punished m°11 severely than usual, as a stimulus to 11 fec. tion, and the only treatment provided for the sick was a dole and an inspection Of the corpse.
By 1665 it was argued that the sick a to be isolated in pest-houses rather then ill their own houses, and many were built' But for 150 years the only properly ellfo forced measure was the burying alive infected families in houses or rooms where arid proximity made death more likely, hunger and isolation added to its terrors. was a system, as Dr Slack argues, whicd must have killed many people who Ay' otherwise have survived. But it may also have saved many from infection by e.trlir ping or restricting movement. In /heal; case it was consistent with broadly-he medical theories, and was usually accepted, however ruefully, by citizens normally outraged by any interference in their movements and property by the state. It appears that the rigour with which such measures were applied owed more to the vindictiveness of authority than to a belief in their efficacy against the sickness. They were not applied to peers, who were able to turn their promptness in evasion mto a privilege, and cathedral precincts were allowed to make their own arrange- ments. The objects of the plague orders Were the poor, who always died in the greatest numbers during epidemics and therefore incurred the blame of being in some way responsible for them, whether by living in dirty conditions, or by their debaucheries and disorderly conduct. Who else was there to denounce? There were very few Jews in England during this period, and the Huguenot communities were exemplary in their plague-discipline; there were no monks or other sinister minorities to blame, and the rich were Skilful at avoiding the role of scapegoat. It Is remarkable how seldom panic turned to Persecution by the mob, as on the conti- nent. Where authority remained, and was Prepared to act, it was usually respected, however partial and inhuman its policies Were For, the magistrates and mayors who stayed at their posts were more concerned with maintaining order than with saving lives or mitigating pain. At least, so says Dr Slack, and I have learned by bitter experience that he is usually right. He even claims that Puritans used these opportuni- ties to enforce their own dismal discipline, when milder magistrates had fled, although not many examples of this are provided, and I suspect that they may be misleading. ,&Y sort of men who stayed to do their duty in a time of general funk incurred not Only the risk of infection but the likelihood of everlasting unpopularity when the fugi- tives returned and resumed their sway; any subsequent imputations or confessions of 111,, otive must be more than usually suspect. tend how the poor women who were paid to tend the sick were persecuted and shunned between epidemics, and then weigh the claim of Camus that 'we learn in time of Pestilence that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.' Certainly, there are no limits to some men's self-admiration, but the public reac- tions toplague described in this book offer justification for it. The poor were ,s,ometimes bold enough to defy orders, at flock risk of blows and gunshot, in order to together for riot, revel or mourning. There were nurses and priests who tended the sick in the teeth of statutes and urdinances but not many. Set against this is a general and robust determination on the Part of the rulers that the sick should ", awl into their holes and die there unseen the unheard, and you have something of le flavour of this precocious triumph of English administration.
It may leave a bitter taste, a foretaste perhaps of the anti-nuclear demand for greater social equality in the face of univer- sal extinction. But as Slack observes, we cannot legitimately condemn what was done by the authorities in those plague- stricken times, for they were doing what they thought necessary, at some personal risk, against an enemy of immense and incalculable strength. In the end, it was these harsh rulers, still without any accu- rate medical knowledge to guide them, who put a stop to the plague in Britain by extending their prohibitions out to sea. Quarantine and closed ports kept the rats and their fleas at a safe distance, while the epidemics continued to rage overseas for another century after they had ceased on this island. It was not better housing, cleaner underwear, baths, or science that did the trick, merely command of the seas and a readiness to learn by the Italian example. Thank God for the Navy.
Slack has much more to say about England and the plague than I have indi- cated here, and he confines himself to a few well-documented areas (mainly Essex and Devon, Exeter, Norwich and Lon- don). He also leaves out everything before the first plague regulations (not the first health regulations as he implies) of 1518, which is a sad loss. Even so, his is a fat and valuable book, salutary medicine for all who hope for survival at any price, and a model of ingenuity and modesty in the use of statistics.
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