Dead animals and vegetables rotted
in the street. Little effort was made to get rid of rubbish and sewage.
Down the middle of the street were channels into which people emptied chamber
pots and buckets of night soil.Dead animals and vegetables rotted
in the street. Little effort was made to get rid of rubbish and sewage.
Down the middle of the street were channels into which people emptied chamber
pots and buckets of night soil.
Some privies (toilets) just hung over rivers or streams. At the back of some houses were a private lavatory and cesspool for sewage. The sewage often seeped into wells and fouled drinking water. The black rat bred and multiplied in this environment.
When the plague reached London in the autumn of 1348, it spread like wildfire.
"It killed off many people every day. It spread so much that from the feast of the Purification (2nd February) till after Easter more than two hundred bodies were buried daily in the new cemetery near Smithfield - to say nothing of other cemeteries. But by the grace of the Holy Spirit, it departed from London at Whitsuntide."