Fearing the contagious disease that killed people within days, victims were buried in mass graves, or 'plague pits', such as the one unearthed at a 14th-century monastery in northwest England.
A plague pit is the informal term used to refer to mass graves in which victims of the Black Death were buried. The term is most often used to describe pits located in Great Britain, but can be applied to any place where bubonic plague victims were buried.
A mass burial of bodies, known to be victims of the Black Death, has been discovered at the site of a 14th-century monastery hospital at Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire. Archaeologists from the University of Sheffield revealed 48 skeletons, many of which were children, at the extremely rare Black Death burial site.
37-39 Artillery Lane, Bishopsgate, was the location of a London plague pit and, before that, a sizable Roman cemetery. It was stated that 149 plague victims were buried at All Saints Church in Isleworth in 1665.
Summary. Limited evidence exists for plague transmission from human corpses. Ten studies reported plague transmission through direct skin contact with blood from animal carcasses, leading to 121 cases of bubonic plague.
Fearing the contagious disease that killed people within days, victims were buried in mass graves, or 'plague pits', such as the one unearthed at a 14th-century monastery in northwest England.
All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried [...] At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit.
To Protect the Corpse from Being Stolen. Snatching dead bodies was common in many parts of England and Scotland in the early 1800s. Therefore, graves were always dug six feet deep to prevent body snatchers from gaining access to the buried remains.
Effects of the Bubonic Plague
The Black Death killed about 1/3 of the European population, and also killed 70% of the people who caught the disease. People thought that by burning the diseased bodies, it would help stop the spread of the disease. Burning the bodies was actually a good thing.
The disappearance of plague from London has been attributed to the Great Fire of London in September 1666, but it also subsided in other cities without such cause. The decline has also been ascribed to quarantine, but effective quarantine was actually not established until 1720.
A plague doctor was a type of doctor who would treat victims of the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, during the second major outbreak of the disease across Western Europe. They were usually hired by cities to treat infected patients regardless of income, especially the poor that could not afford to pay.
Between 1787 and 1814, bones were transferred from other Parisian cemeteries; the final transfer of bones took place in 1859. A number of notable people buried in those cemeteries likely had their bones transferred to the Catacombs.
The Catacombs of Paris (French: Catacombes de Paris, pronunciation (help·info)) are underground ossuaries in Paris, France, which hold the remains of more than six million people in a small part of a tunnel network built to consolidate Paris's ancient stone quarries.
A burial ground for centuries, Holywell Mount was used heavily during the 1664 - 1666 outbreak of the Great Plague. There is still an open area which can be seen from 38 Scrutton Street, although the rest of the site has now been built over.
Black Death—The Invention of Quarantine
The Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed an astonishing 25 million lives in just four years.
Each burial was in a pit 8 feet (2.4 m) deep and liberally sprinkled with quicklime. The bodies were sometimes burnt before interment. It is considered that the cholera risk posed through disturbance of cholera pits from the 19th century is non-existent as transmission is through contaminated water or food.
Within just hours an individual could be in agony from a number of these symptoms, if not all of them. The Black Plague, in all forms, is a relatively fast death, but an astonishingly painful one.
Bubonic plague refers to the painful lymph node swellings called buboes, primarily found around the base of the neck, in the armpits and groin which oozed pus and bled. Victims underwent damage to the skin and underlying tissue until they were covered in dark blotches.
At the same time, the plague brought benefits as well: modern labor movements, improvements in medicine and a new approach to life. Indeed, much of the Italian Renaissance—even Shakespeare's drama to some extent—is an aftershock of the Black Death.
A grave for a single burial is a minimum of 1.5 metres deep, a double grave is two metres deep and a grave for three burials goes down 2.5 metres. Legislation requires a minimum of one metre of soil above the last internment. Most graves are 6'9" (206cm) long and 24" (61cm) wide.
Most Christians tend to bury their dead facing east. This is because they believe in the second coming of Christ and scripture teaches that he will come from the east. In this manner, they place their dead in a position so they can meet Christ face-to-face during his second coming.
If you are looking at a long-lasting ground casket, pick a steel or metal casket. If the grave site is low on water content or moisture, metal caskets are known to last even longer, over five decades. Under favorable weather conditions, experts say that metal caskets may even last more than that – up to 80 years.
Even though the Plague killed many, it had beneficial effects on medicine, especially in Europe. Doctors began to question Galenic medicine, they relied more on observation, and they paid more attention to anatomy. There were also improvements in medical ethics, public health, and hospitals.
A plague doctor was a physician who treated victims of bubonic plague during epidemics mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries. These physicians were hired by cities to treat infected patients regardless of income, especially the poor that could not afford to pay.
Sharon DeWitte examines skeletal remains to find clues on survivors of 14th-century medieval plague. A new study suggests that people who survived the medieval mass-killing plague known as the Black Death lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347.