GREAT SACRIFICE
DURING THE PLAGUE
G'day folks,
This story is relevant to our current times.
After the Great Plague of London broke out in 1665, 100,000 people (almost a quarter of the population) were dead within seven months. Those who could afford it fled the capital to escape the pestilence. But distance was no protection, as villagers 160 miles away in Eyam, Derbyshire, were to discover.
When George Viccars, the village tailor, took delivery of a bale of
cloth from London, he found it to be damp and hung it out to dry by a
fire. He had no idea that by doing so he was introducing death into the
community.
Viccars was unaware that fleas from rats caused the plague and that his
cloth was infested with them. Within a week he was dead. By the end of
the month five other villagers had died and another 23 fell victim in
the following month.
And then a legend was created. After fatalities mounted, the church
leader, William Mompesson, who was born on this day, 28th April, in
1639, took the courageous decision to isolate the village from the
outside world, thus preventing the spread of the disease.
Some of the villagers wanted to flee, but Mompesson, working with
another clergyman, Thomas Stanley, was the driving force in persuading
them to stay. The quarantine was a momentous decision by the villagers
who knew that they might well be giving their own lives to save others.
Grateful outsiders brought money, which was left in a water trough
containing vinegar to sterilise the coins, and food, which was left it
at the boundary of the village. Thus the villagers were not left to
starve.
When the plague had finally taken its toll by November 1666, 260 people,
out of Eyam’s population of 350, were dead. They included Mompesson’s
wife, Caroline.
Their sacrifice may well have saved many thousands of lives in the North
of England and the historic episode is still commemorated each year in
the village.
Clancy's comment: Day by day, I wonder what will happen to us in this world pandemic.
I'm ...
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