Eyam’s Quarantine
To prevent the spread of the plague to other towns and villages, Eyam decided to quarantine itself. Two men were responsible for helping the villagers make this momentous decision. One was Eyam’s Anglican vicar, William Mompesson. The other was Thomas Stanley, the former rector. Stanley had been replaced in 1660 by Mompesson’s predecessor because of his Puritan views. However, he continued to live in Eyam. While Stanley and Mompesson’s interpretation of their Christian faith differed, they were united in their purpose to stop the plague.
Mompesson and Stanley ordered the villagers to build a stone perimeter wall half a mile away from the village. No one from within Eyam was allowed to cross the boundary until the settlement was free of plague- even those without symptoms. To ensure that the villagers did not starve, arrangements were made for merchants from local towns and the Earl of Devonshire at nearby Chatsworth House to leave goods and medicine along the southern boundary of Eyam. In return, the villagers paid for goods with coins disinfected in vinegar which they deposited in the hollows of the stone wall.
Stanley and Monpesson were successful in convincing the villagers to observe the quarantine. During the period Eyam was sealed off, only two people tried to leave the village. One, a woman broke quarantine so she could attend the market in the town of Tideswell just five miles away. However, once she arrived at her destination, people recognized her as a resident of Eyam and drove her away with missiles of food and mud and cries of “The Plague, The Plague.” Perhaps the villagers of Eyam did not leave because they knew there was no sanctuary for them in the outside world.
Throughout the summer of 1666, conditions in Eyam began to decline. By early August, death was a daily event. As more villagers died, the neglect grew. The fields were left untended and repairs were ignored. When the stonemason died, the villagers had to carve their own gravestones. They also had to bury their own dead. One farmer’s wife, Elizabeth Hancock buried her husband and all six of her children in the space of eight days. She was forced to wrap them in shrouds and drag them through the streets by their feet, burying them in the fields that surrounded the village in the area known today as The Riley Graves.
The final death in Eyam was on November 1st 1666. By this time, out of the 344 villagers, 260 had died. The houses of those wiped out still stand, remembered today as the “Plague Cottages.” Each is marked with a green plaque that lists the members of each family lost to the plague. As for those that survived, except for Reverend Monpesson who resigned his living in 1669 and left Eyam never to return, they took up their lives again. Their immunity was due to a plague-resistant chromosome, rather than prayer or the smoking of tobacco as was believed at the time. However, they had achieved their objective. Because of Eyam’s sacrifice, the Great Plague spread no further in Derbyshire.
Where Do We get this stuff? Here are our Sources:
Did This Sleepy Village stop the Black Death? Eleanor Ross, BBC News, October 29, 2015
Living with the plague, BBC Legacies (UK History Local to you: Derby)
The Great Plague 1665 – the Black Death, Ben Johnson, Historic UK
The Great Plague of London, John S Morrill, Encyclopedia Brittanica, September 8, 2016.
Welcome Collection – Wool, Fleas, Plague
Related:
History Collection – 16 Dreadful Details about the Black Plague
History Collection – 6 Myths About the Black Death Plague