Black Death (Part 2) Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
Note: Scotland is produced and designed to be heard, not read. We encourage you, if you are able, to listen to the audio, which provides insight which is significantly different to how it appears on the page. Transcripts are generated from the original scripts of the episodes. They may be slightly different to the corresponding audio and may contain errors.
Hi, it’s Michael. As you’ve probably noticed from the ‘Part 2’ on the episode title, this is the second part of our two-parter of plague stories. If you’ve not listened to Part 1 yet, stop, go back, listen to that, then come back and see us. Enjoy!
Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 6 - Black Death (Part 2)
Not enough stories begin with a cat. But this one does. It sleeps on a shelf, high above the hold of the ship it’s sworn to protect. Cats, the most noble of creatures, swear an oath of allegiance to protect humankind against the scourge of their …
Listen. I’m sorry. I can’t do this any longer. Someone was feeding the cat. That’s why the cat was there.
As it slept its watch was disturbed by the sound of scuffling. The cat, having just eaten, was keen to get back to sleep and decided to let the scuffling slide.
After all, there are only so many rats you can eat in an afternoon.
Those rats took shelter in the holds of the ships that circumnavigated the globe, taking goods - and people - from port to port. Most ships carried not only delicious cargo that would be a feast for any beastie who fancied an easy life, but they also needed to carry supplies for their crews. The rats could gorge themselves anything they liked, provided they kept out of the way of the feline patroller.
When the ships pulled into port, their supplies were unloaded which unsettled the stowaways and forced them onto the dock. From there, they would head anywhere they could find food, often spreading out into the surrounding warehouses and sewers.
One rat carrying an infected flea could bring the plague into the heart of a city and spark an epidemic which could wipe out a population. This rat had just arrived in a little port near Edinburgh. This rat, and its fleas, had just docked in Leith.
From Be Quiet Media, this is Scotland, a show about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
MICHAEL PARK: Gilbert Skeyne - was the established authority on the Plague, and wrote the first known Scottish medical text in 1570 titled
SKEYNE: Ane breve descriptioun of the Pest quhair (where) in the causis, signis and sum special preservatioun and cure thairof ar contenit
MICHAEL PARK: To Skeyne, the disease he knew as The Pest was a corruption of the air which in turn caused the body to become corrupted. He believed the Black Death was - as many would have at the time - a punishment from God who blew the contagion across the earth.
He also believed that it spread through such varied things as:
* stagnant water
* filth
* unburied carrion
* the south wind blowing from pestiferous places ---- [[CUT IN]] for anyone keeping score, that means England [[CUT OUT]]
* the reek of coal
* decayed plants
* rotten fruit.
All of these things combined in the air to form a pestilent miasma which carried the plague in its vapours. So how did Skeyne know if the plague was about to make an appearance? It seemed simple to him…
SKEYNE: 1. Calm heat, especially humidity at the onset of summer, and all those factors which comprised the ‘epidemic constitution’
2. Heavenly augurs - eclipses, comets and falling stars
3. The weird behaviour of animals
4. Drought, famine, and miscarriages
5. Pox and pustules
MICHAEL PARK: That last one is probably fair enough. The rest… well… watch out for comets everybody.
Skeyne also thought that there were places which were most susceptible to the disease. Places facing south, places near standing water and burial grounds, and places on the sea. He was onto something, although it’s possible he hadn’t worked out exactly why. Places by the sea were more susceptible to plague because of those docking ships and their rats.
SKEYNE: The persons most likely to be subject to the the Pest are the sanguine and phlegmatic, with their thick blood and humors; less susceptible were the choleric, and least of all the melancholy.
MICHAEL PARK: Preservation from the pest required first repentance, and secondly a proper regimen.
SKEYNE: Good evacuation - bleeding, bowels, urine, and sweat is essential; the air, both in and out of doors, should be cleansed by fires, aromatics and vinegar. Cleanliness and sanitation must always be maintained. Stray animals should be destroyed.
Men should abstain from sleeping in the daytime, anger, crying, and ‘Venus play’ —— [[[CUT IN]]] Yes - that does mean what you think it means [[[CUT OUT]]]] ——, as well as from ‘meats’ which corrupt easily, fruit, pork and waterfowl.
Finally, various herbal simples and compounds were useful preventatives.
MICHAEL PARK: There were no such herbal remedies in Leith, which at this time wasn’t part of the City of Edinburgh. Was the first to suffer the effects of the disease. The rats coming off the ships began the spread of infection, and this ‘swiftly spreading pestilence’ tore through the tight, winding streets of the town and was carried to Edinburgh in supply runs. By the time people realised the plague had returned, it was too late.
This wasn’t the first time plague had come to Edinburgh - in fact, given what I’m about to tell you - they were more prepared than you might think. For the last hundred and fifty years, the Privy Council had been coming up with ways to isolate plague outbreaks and quarantine entire populations with varying degrees of success. Most of their ideas seemed to centre around the expulsion of ‘vagabonds’ from towns though - not exactly a surefire method of success.
In Edinburgh the local council had taken things further and built temporary sheds on Burgh Muir, a field beyond the city limits, so that the infected could be isolated.
Sometime around 1500 they hired ‘clengers’ - cleaners in modern terms - who would be instated each time an outbreak rolled through.
Wearing grey smocks emblazoned with a saltire, these clengers would be responsible for taking those suspected of having plague into quarantine on the muir. They would come round with a cart - a primitive ambulance - and take infected people away, walking in front of the cart ringing a bell to warn people in the surrounding streets of the danger.
They carried long staffs which they would use to move contaminated materials while other clengers would use massive vats of boiling water to disinfect - as much as was possible - the clothes of the infected. Those housed on the muir would either die, or be released to return home.
This backwards system had some success in some outbreaks but once the disease arrived in Edinburgh in 1645 it spread like wildfire among the overcrowded tenements, tight closes and tiny streets.
The city’s architecture didn’t help much. A defensive wall had been constructed in the 15th Century and since none of the population were willing to live outside it, houses had been built on top of houses, tenements on tenements and some buildings in the city towered as high as fourteen storeys. It’s what gives the city its unique look… it’s also what helped to spread the plague.
For all the clengers and their ilk tried to keep it at bay, there was nothing they could do without a way of treating the infection.
And what kind of person would be bold enough to walk among the pestilence and the corpses trying to cure the sick?
A very well paid one.
That’s 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, @BeQuietMedia, you can find us on Facebook, or you can email scotland@bequiet.media.
John Paulitious was a doctor, in the loosest possible sense. He was Edinburgh’s first plague doctor, walking the streets attending to homes who had hung a white sheet from their window in order to attract his attention.
The population of the city had swollen to 32,000 by the time of the outbreak, and it was the responsibility of just one person to administer aid to as many folk as possible.
John Paulitious was a doctor, but he was developing quite the bad cough.
He had gone into homes at great risk to himself in order to help anyone he could. In doing so, he caught pneumonic plague and died in agony in June 1645.
After his death, the council tried desperately to find someone else to take on the role but - unsurprisingly - no-one was very keen. Most people knew - or thought they knew - that the Pest was spread by miasma, foul smelling particles in the air. The very act of breathing in the street, surrounded by the dead and the dying could be enough to kill you too.
But of course then, as now, money talks. Authorities in Glasgow at roughly the same time offered their plague doctor a wage of 10 dollars - an old Scots denomination which was the equivalent to about 600 shillings. That works out at roughly 3,000 pounds in today’s money - or if you’re listening post-Brexit - three hundred million.
It was the equivalent of more than a year’s wages for a skilled tradesman - and given that most plague doctors weren’t qualified doctors, it’s a tidy sum. By mid-June of 1645, they’d found their replacement…
The figure steps out into the warm Edinburgh night, a nightmare in black.
The street is silent, save for the occasional sickening moan from behind the closed doors of the tenements. The figure keeps its long staff raised above the ground to avoid the filth which clags and cakes on its boots. It pulls the brim of its wide, black hat in greeting.
People scuttle from the steps into the closes, unwilling to face the figure’s dead-eyed judgement.
The hat sits above a hideous visage. A pale, sickly bird’s face, with a long, pointed beak and unnatural, unknowable, glassy eyes.
The creature gives off a sickly-sweet scent, like roses, lavender and herbs all mixed in with vinegar and tar. To the demoralised, In the gloom of Edinburgh’s tight, winding streets and dingy, infested closes, the creature is a terrifying apparation. A demon raised from hell to reap the souls of the damned and pestilent and use its staff to drag them to a meeting with the beelzebub.
The nightmare in black was just a man. A man named George Rae who had taken the role of plague doctor on promise of a huge financial reward.
The costume, designed to keep out the miasmas, was first created a quarter of a century earlier by Charles de l’Orme and put to use in Napoli, before the idea spread across Europe as cities did everything they could to halt the rampant spread of the disease.
The terrifying get-up served a very practical purpose, and once citizens became used to seeing him, the ‘beak doctor’ as he was often called, was a welcome sight. His methods were primitive. The stick was used to examine patients at a distance and remove soiled bits of clothing or bedding from the boils.
Where many of his contemporaries used leeches and, weirdly enough, frogs to ‘rebalance the humors’, Rae took a more… pragmatic approach. He would slice open the pus-filled buboes on his patients’ skin, draining the boil of its poison before cauterising the wound with a white-hot poker.
It was a no-nonsense method - and it’s thought that this treatment may have actually saved lives.
The mask worn by the doctor, was the pinnacle of medical science at the time. According to de l’Orme…
de l’Orme: “A nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and to carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak"
MICHAEL PARK: Rae, who survived the plague outbreak in Edinburgh, would have believed that the mask saved him from the ravages of the disease which took his predecessor.
In actual fact, although the potent herbs and spices he would have been breathing in every day would have spared him from the worst of the smell of death, decay and filth, the mask would have done very little to save him.
It was the rest of the thick leather and waxed canvas outfit which covered every piece of exposed flesh that kept him safe. It stopped infected fleas latching onto him.
The council of the city would have been apoplectic that their Plague Doctor came out the other side unscathed. They had promised him a king’s ransom to do the work. They had expected him to die carrying it out. They never had any intention of paying him.
He pursued his promised riches for years after the outbreak but it’s believed that he never received any payment for all the good work he did.
He didn’t get paid, but at least he survived. Very few other people in Edinburgh were that lucky.
More just after this.
Mid Roll
Hey! Please make sure to subscribe and leave us a wee rating and review on your podcast app of choice. Not only does it stroke our delicate, fragile egos, it really helps other people find the show and the more people who find the show, the more our delicate, fragile egos are stroked. You’re all brilliant - thank you so much for listening.
Back to the show!
‘the number of the dead exceeds the number of the living’
The mass graves and putrid closes were full to overflowing of Edinburgh’s unfortunate citizenry, scythed down by a strange and unknowable affliction. At the height of the panic, with the local council near to collapse due to the effects of the disease, a decision was made to try and cut off the disease as quickly as possible.
If people couldn’t be saved, they should be abandoned to their fate.
So it was in the case of Mary King’s Close. One of Edinburgh’s most vibrant and bustling streets, a major part of the life of the city was deemed so prone to outbreak that they made the decision to brick up the entrance, ensuring that no-one could enter or leave the street.
The idea that they were left to starve is a wee bit contentious, although it does make a good story. Contemporary accounts suggest that food and coal was passed to the street’s three hundred inhabitants and that the walling off of the close was an attempt to quarantine them rather than kill them off.
After the plague began to pass in 1647, two years after it had first arrived at the port of Leith, the devastation wrought on the city was such that Mary King’s Close was abandoned by its remaining populace. This was the case for many from Edinburgh who had seen their friends and families die in front of them. Those who remained often looked for alternative accommodation or tried to leave altogether.
The close remained abandoned and neglected for almost forty years until a housing shortage saw some families move back in. Legend has it that the city employed two brothers to clear the remains from the tenements. Instead of treating the skeletal remains with respect they hacked them apart, disturbing the spirits and leading to the paranormal hauntings which Mary King’s Close is famous for today.
The Close was eventually closed and demolished to make way for the Royal Exchange, latterly the City Chambers in the 18th Century. The stories of its inhabitants would be lost to history were it not for the tourist attraction which now inhabits the close.
Despite the best efforts of George Rae and the other officials who worked tirelessly to protect as many people as possible, the plague which swept through Leith and Edinburgh was unstoppable.
It’s estimated that as much as half of Edinburgh’s population was wiped out by the Plague. The port town of Leith, where the outbreak began, recorded two thousand seven hundred and thirty six deaths in their parish records. In his history of Leith, Alexander Campbell estimates that the population of the town would have been somewhere around four thousand.
Burial grounds overflowed, mass graves sprang up at sites around the city but they were soon oversubscribed too. As more and more people fell ill, there weren’t enough people left to cart away the corpses. They were left to lie in their homes, in the streets, in gutters among the filth and rats.
The rats ate the rotting flesh, and gorged themselves, and bred. And the fleas gorged themselves, and bred, and the pestilence grew and grew. It gorged itself… and it spread…
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 dazzle ship, Mitch Bain. Find him online — search for Mitch Bain Music on Facebook.
Additional voices and purring for this episode were provided by Andy Stewart, Mitch Bain, and my cat -- Milo
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