Black Death (Part 1) Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
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MICHAEL PARK: Hi, it’s Michael. I wanted to nip in before this episode and say thank you so much for your support so far. When I started making Scotland I hadn’t really expected this much positivity and I’m absolutely buzzing about it — and each and every one of you who choose to listen to us.
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Also, this is the first of a two-part episode — I hope you enjoy it.
Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 5 - Black Death (Part 1)
Glasgow. 3rd August, 1900. Day Zero.
A tram rattles its way down Rutherglen Road and passes by the burial ground. It’s Friday and the tram is buzzing with workers making their way home for the weekend. One weel kent face is missing though. Mrs Bogie, the fish hawker, isn’t well and neither’s her two-month old granddaughter - the wean she carries everywhere while her daughter works in a rag store to pay the baby’s way.
Nobody thought much of it as they crossed Rose Street, the road on which the Bogies lived. She’d hopped off the tram the day before, quite the thing, no sign that anything was wrong.
Day 6 - 9th August — Mrs B passes away. She outlived her wee granddaughter by two days.
Many of the people who had been on the tram that Friday went to her wake, held in the single room flat on the ground floor of number 71. They thought she’d died of a stomach bug - acute gastroenteritis.
The wake itself was much as you’d expect. Family, friends and neighbours gathered around the open casket to pay their respects. Open wakes were popular in Glasgow. They were really popular in the Gorbals — any excuse to have a wee kirk-sanctioned drink was always welcome. — Still is.
The wee singl-end flat was crowded. It’s said there were a hundred people there, but I doubt anyone there was sober enough to take a headcount. So there they gathered around the body, sipping whisky, toasting the dead.
From Be Quiet Media, this is Scotland, a show about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
Day 8: They buried Mrs Bogie - or Case A as she came to be known - on the 11th August - we don’t know when they buried the wee one. The next day Mr Bogie, the grandfather, was taken ill. He wasn’t admitted to hospital for another two weeks - he was dead by the end of September.
Day 16: Patient C - a 9-year-old girl - one of the M family - fell ill on August 19th and died at home two days later. She was the first of the ‘M’ family of Thistle Street to become ill.
The symptoms were similar to those of Mrs Bogie and the baby, but it wasn’t until two more of the family sickened the week after the child’s death that two doctors conferred on their diagnoses. The remaining M’s were taken to hospital with an unknown infectious disease and the public health authorities notified.
By the time old Mr Bogie was taken to hospital on 27th August - Day 24 - they knew that the Plague had come to Glasgow.
DR FIONA MCCUBBIN: There are three forms of the disease, usually lumped together as Bubonic Plague. They all come from the same bacteria, but their symptoms are quite different. You probably learned in history class that the plague is spread by rats, but really it’s the fleas which live as parasites on a rat’s fur which pass on the infection. They feast on the animal, but when it dies, and there aren’t any other rodents around, they look for a new host.
They don’t care if the host is human.
Their bite transmits the Yersinia pestis bacteria to their host which develops into an infection of the lymphatic system. This can then spread to the lungs - known as pneumonic plague, or to the blood: septicaemic plague.
It starts off like flu, but quickly people start presenting with buboes - swollen pus-filled lymph nodes in the armpit or groin. From there they would develop seizures, gangrenous skin, bloody sputum etc. depending on where the bacteria had spread to. The infection in the immune system lets in many more nasty bugs.
Sometimes people got better on their own - but in times before antibiotics and appropriate sanitisation - most cases resulted in death within a few days.
Nobody is entirely sure what it was that Mrs Bogie and her wee baby granddaughter were exposed to. Mr Bogie - the grandfather - was a dockworker but his ships never left the British coast - so it has to be said that the chances of them coming into contact with a random, infected flea were incredibly slim - and incredibly unlucky.
There were no cases of anyone being infected in any other part of the UK and plague cases usually came in waves.
But people in the Gorbals kept getting ill.
The Authorities had a 10-stage plan to deal with plague in the city and keep it confined to the Gorbals. The following was only point 8.
MEDICAL PAMPHLET: (8) The detailed arrangements for the removal of cases and disinfection of infected tenements are under the personal supervision of one of the medical staff, and may be detailed as follows:-
(a) Removal of patient to hospital
(b) Removal of ‘contacts’ to reception house
(c) Fumigation of infected house by liquified sulphur dioxide from 12 to 24 hours, the disinfectant being used in proportion to the cubic space dealt with
(d) After the fumigation the house is entered; all articles of clothing etc. to be removed, are first of all thoroughly wetted with 2 percent solution of formalin, then wrapped up in sheets soaked in the same fluid and removed to the Sanitary Wash-house. There all articles which cannot be boiled or steamed - or treated with formaldehyde - are burned.
(e) The walls, ceilings, floors, woodwork etc. of the infected house are also sprayed with formalin solution
(f) All houses in the infected tenement are cleansed by the Department; the lobbies, stairs, and closes being dealt with by formaldehyde or ‘chloride of lime’ solution
(g) Courts of such tenements are watered with ‘chloride of lime’ solution
(h) Ash-pits have contents watered with same and then removed and burned
Rats: the traditional scapegoat for the plague were immediately culled in their thousands by an army of exterminators.
Some of the dead rodents were kept back and tested at Glasgow University. None of them showed signs of harbouring the Yersinia pestis bacteria. So if it wasn’t the rats, which were abundant in the manky tenement closes and ash-pits… what was spreading the disease?
What would they do if the infection began to spread beyond the Gorbals?
They had planned to disinfect the coins in people’s pockets… even the trams and ferries were to be sprayed. But it was a chance discovery which nipped the Glasgow plague in the bud.
Mid Roll
I absolutely love making this show and I’ve been overwhelmed by the support we’ve had from you, our listeners. That’s why from March we’re going to be doing two shows per month, starting with a second part about the plague, from a time that might be a little more familiar to you. Keep your eyes on your feed and follow us on Twitter and Facebook - search for Scotland - Scottish History Podcast - to stay up to date.
Back to the show…
If it wasn’t the rats, something else had to be spreading the infection from house to house, person to person. From two unfortunate individuals in Rose Street, the plague was spreading outwards, affecting homes in the surrounding streets.
But what did they have in common?
With the infection confirmed, the authorities began to trace the people who had attended the wake of Mrs Bogie, and subsequently those who had visited infected households, inoculated them and quarantined them in a reception house. The uninfected were allowed to go about their business normally, but had to return to quarantine every day and spend the night after being subjected to rigorous medical tests.
Anyone found to be showing symptoms of plague was immediately removed to hospital to be treated.
Their immediate family and visitors were quarantined and the public health authorities sought permission from the Catholic Church in Glasgow to ban wakes in households where it was suspected that an inhabitant had died of the disease.
“It may now safely be asserted that the authorities in Glasgow have successfully grappled with the bubonic plague which has troubled the city for the last fortnight.
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: No further cases have been admitted to the hospital since Monday, and of the 16 cases which were said to have been suffering from the plague, two patients have now been declared to be free from that disease. The number under observation in the reception houses has been increased to 111, but this very fact points to the carefulness with which the work of the medical and sanitary authorities is carried out.”
MICHAEL PARK: - Manchester Guardian, September 1900
By late September, the infection in the city was under control, largely thanks to the fastidious work of the medical authorities. The outbreak, part of the Third Plague Pandemic, claimed approximately 2.2 million lives in India and China, but only 16 in Glasgow.
This was the last time there was a plague outbreak in Scotland, and it was using the knowledge gained from earlier pandemics that allowed them to catch it as quickly as they did. But what about the first time the plague rolled onto our shores?
Find out after this…
Mid Roll
If you’re listening to the show and going “ohhhhhhh I wish they’d cover my favourie topic!” then give us a shout! We love hearing your feedback and ideas for Scotland. You can tweet us, @Scotland_Pod, you can find us on Facebook, or you can email scotland@bequiet.media.
Year Zero: 1350. The Second Pandemic comes to Scotland.
HENRY KNIGHTON: “The Scots, hearing of the dreadful plague among the English, suspected that it had come about through the vengeance of God, and, according to the common report, they were accustomed to swear “be the foul death of Englond” Believing that the wrath of God had befallen the English, they assembled in Selkirk forest with the intention of invading the kingdom, when the fierce mortality overtook them...”
MICHAEL PARK: — Henry Knighton, a canon of St Mary’s Abbey
In the three years since the Black Death had arrived in Britain, many Scots believed it was a disease wrought upon their neighbours by a vengeful god - striking down swathes of the population in retribution for their treatment of the Scots.
Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t.
The Scots decided to take advantage of the unfortunate situation of their neighbours, sending an army to invade and plunder Durham. Unfortunately, if you go down to a plague infected area with the intention of stealing the good crockery then there’s a good chance you might come back with more than you bargained for.
John of Fordun, in his contemporary chronicle - the catchily named Scotichronicon - described it thus:
JOHN OF FORDUN: 'In 1350, there was a great pestilence and mortality of men in the kingdom of Scotland, and this pestilence also raged for many years before and after in various parts of the world. So great a plague has never been heard of from the beginning of the world to the present day, or been recorded in books. For this plague vented its spite so thoroughly that fully a third of the human race was killed.
At God's command, moreover, the damage was done by an extraordinary and novel form of death. Those who fell sick of a kind of gross swelling of the flesh lasted for barely two days. This sickness befell people everywhere, but especially the middling and lower classes, rarely the great. It generated such horror that children did not dare to visit their dying parents, nor parents their children, but fled for fear of contagion as if from leprosy or a serpent.'
From the symptoms described, it sounds like the cold winter in Scotland induced an outbreak of pneumonic plague - worse than the already unpleasant bubonic - which developed into septicaemia in many cases.
The weather would have been fatal to the Bubonic plague which ravaged England, but pneumonic loved the conditions. Basically the weather gave us the BAD PLAGUE.
The Black Death, as it came to be known, wiped out almost a quarter of the population of Scotland as it swept North, carried by the retreating army and its baggage train.
With no way to understand, or even control, the spread of the pandemic, people were forced to watch as their families, friends, and neighbours were taken away by a hideous affliction. With nowhere to run, many people were left waiting to die.
The plague didn’t discriminate. No matter who you were, no matter what you’d done, no matter what your standing in life was, the plague would come into your home and it would kill you. — It gave birth to one of the most famous allegories of medieval art - the Danse Macabre - an image of Death leading popes, emperors, kings, childred and peasants to the grave.
No matter your station, the dance of death unites us all.
You may think that the third global plague pandemic, which lasted from 1855 to 1960, was a long one — you’d be right.
A pandemic lasting over a century is nothing to be sniffed at - but The Second Pandemic, which began in Mongolia in the 1330s, lasted for over 500 years before evolving into the bacteria which took Mrs Bogie in Glasgow.
Plague epidemics came in waves over those centuries but the strain of bacteria carried by those soldiers in 1350 is thought to have killed up to 200 million people in Eurasia alone.
The plague came back to Scotland several times over the centuries, but the Great Plague - the one you always hear about sweeping through London, only to be stopped by the Great Fire - never arrived in Scotland, mostly because of the controls put in place by a Privy Council who had learned their lesson.
After all… twenty years before that, in 1645, the Danse Macabre visited Edinburgh.
But that… is a story for next time…
CREDITS
You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park, and is a production from Be Quiet Media. The score for this episode was by the human cloaking device, Mitch Bain. Find him online — search for Mitch Bain Music on Facebook.
Additional voices for this episode were provided by Jamie Mowat, Adam Clery, and Mitch Bain, and Doctor Fiona McCubbin
You can find out more about the show on our website, thisisscotland.co, and get in touch with any feedback you have for us on Twitter - @BeQuietMedia or we’re on Facebook if you search for Scotland - Scottish History Podcast