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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 Britain, but can be applied to any country in which Bubonic plague victims were buried.
Origin
The plague epidemics which swept across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centurys, are estimated to have killed between one-third and two-thirds of Europe's population. Disposal of the bodies of those who died presented huge problems for the authorities, and eventually the normal patterns of burial and funerary observance broke down, usually during the most severe epidemics.
Practices
At the start of the plague outbreak, parishes did the best they could to provide proper burials for their parishioners, but soon ran out of space and began to dig mass graves within the city. However, the plague was so devastating that soon, in late 1665, the group graves began to be dug outside the city. Often hundreds of bodies would be buried in a single location, as the risk of further infection from traditional funerary rites was too great. It is unlikely, in the case of the Black Death, that this practice had any appreciable effect on slowing down the spread of the disease.
References
- Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, "The Greatest Epidemic of History" ("La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire", in L'Histoire n° 310, June 2006, pp.45-46, say "between one-third and two-thirds"; Robert Gottfried (1983). "Black Death" in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 2, pp.257-67, says "between 25 and 45 percent".
- Population Loss
- Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe
External Links
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