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By Lucy Worsley\n \t\t<\/p>
Published: Monday, 13 June 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>
\u201cWhy should people study the Black Death<\/a>?\u201d I asked historian John Hatcher. \u201cBecause,\u201d he laughed, \u201cit\u2019ll make you feel better about coronavirus<\/a>. \u201dWhen the bubonic plague swept through England in 1348\u201349, it wiped out something like half of the population. Giovanni Boccaccio\u2019s classic account of plague symptoms describes how first \u201cswellings in the groin or under the armpits, some egg-shaped, others the size of an apple\u201d would appear. Victims then \u201cbegan to find dark blotches on their arms and thighs. These were signs that someone would die.\u201d<\/p>\n The rich were more likely to survive, hiding away on country estates where the risk of infection was lower. Priests, however, had terrible survival rates because, as they heard the confessions of the dying, they were in the direct line of fire.<\/p>\n Professor Hatcher has studied the Black Death\u2019s rampage through one particular Suffolk village, Walsham le Willows, and led me to the story of one particular woman, Olivia Cranmer, which had rather a surprising ending. The Cranmers were serfs<\/a>, with the right to cultivate assigned land. In return, they had to pay their lord for all sorts of basic things, such as getting married. Though luckier than many people who had no access to land at all, the Cranmers still lived on the edge. Life in England in 1348 was precarious because the agricultural techniques available couldn\u2019t really support the population. And a history of hunger made a body less able to resist and survive the Black Death.<\/p>\n The court records of Walsham, a village of around 1,200 souls, register an astonish- ing 119 men dying just between the court sessions of May and June 1349. But these deaths were recorded only because the customary death duty \u2013 often a cow \u2013 would now be payable to the lord of the manor. And the court rolls don\u2019t mention the deaths of women or children, because they were economically irrelevant.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why it\u2019s so surprising that Olivia Cranmer appears in the rolls enough times for us to track her life story. The Cranmer family were not infrequent law-breakers: they were fined for having more sheep than they were permitted to, for example. Olivia first pops up in the records when she had to pay a penalty for having an illegitimate child. When she did later marry, the absence of the usual payment due suggests that it might have been a forced marriage \u2013 a union seen to \u201cput right\u201d her position as an unmarried mother. Life then seems to have treated her well until 1349 when her grandfather William, her father and her two brothers died. Next, her husband, Robert, was taken.<\/p>\n The deaths of so many men all over England completely changed social dynamics. Some labourers refused to work altogether, thinking that life was too short. Others demanded higher wages. And there were women, like Olivia, who became important in an unprecedented way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The 18th century\u2019s most high-profile patient with a mental illness was, of course, George III. But intertwined with his life story is that of a woman whose experiences of mental ill health show how a person\u2019s rank dramatically changed the treatment they received as a patient in Georgian England.<\/p><\/div>\n But Margaret now presented Georgian society<\/a> with a problem. She was ill, clearly, but she was also a criminal. In France she might well have been executed in a barbarous fashion, but the British prided themselves on doing things differently. Instead, she was committed to hospital.<\/p>\n This hospital, though, was the dreaded \u201cBedlam<\/a>\u201d: the Bethlehem Hospital, where patients were sometimes chained to the walls. Its authorities decided that Margaret should be placed in the wing for \u201cincurables\u201d \u2013 people who they considered were never going to get well. And there poor Margaret remained, year after year. She was probably treated with leeches and emetics, just as George III had been, until the royal doctors panicked and brought in physicians with slightly more up-to-date tools for treating mental illness. The king\u2019s doctors, operating at the forefront of medical practice, began to prescribe calm, quiet and fresh air, instead of the old methods: blood-letting and violent purging.<\/p>\n After five years, the hospital authorities decided that Margaret no longer needed to be restrained with a chain, but no one was ever going to let this \u201cdangerous\u201d woman go free. Partly because of the king\u2019s illness, treatment and temporary recovery, Georgian society grew gradually more interested in what was going on its \u201cmad- houses\u201d, and in 1815 parliament heard about the barbaric conditions in the Bethlehem Hospital.<\/p>\n A new regime of reporting and inspecting was introduced, and the hospital\u2019s record-keeping was vastly improved. These records reveal that Margaret was, by the late 1810s, a very elderly woman, quiet in her ways and in good health, albeit hard of hearing. They also tell us that she enjoyed tea, snuff and gingerbread.<\/p>\n Margaret died in 1828, having spent 42 years in the system. The reforms came too late to bring about any major improvement in her life, but at least these records allow us to see her for herself at last: not as a criminal or a patient, but simply as an old lady.<\/p>\n In the 1590s, one midwife<\/a> and \u201cwise wife\u201d (or healer) gained a good reputation among the patients she helped from her home in the Scottish village of Keith, East Lothian. Yet Agnes Sampson also had the terrible misfortune to be in the wrong job at the wrong time. Scots of Agnes\u2019s generation were fearful of witchcraft<\/a>, and the majority of those accused of this crime were women. Witch scares frequently erupted at times when standards of living declined, as happened in the 1590s. Thanks to a prolonged spell of poor weather and increased pressure on the land, people were going hungry \u2013 and society needed someone to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cWitches\u201d were thought to be people who\u2019d made a terrible pact with the devil, promising to do his bidding in return for a long life. Europe\u2019s \u201cexperts\u201d on witchcraft proclaimed in scholarly books that, though men could be seduced into witchcraft, women were particularly vulnerable to the devil\u2019s blandishments. On top of that, the religious changes of the 16th century \u2013 particularly the coming of the Reformation to Scotland \u2013 led people to take more extreme religious positions. This was true for both Protestants and Catholics, but was particularly true of King James VI of Scotland.<\/a> Hoping to position himself as a good and godly heir to the Protestant throne of England, he thought his credentials would be improved by getting tough on witchcraft.<\/p>\n It was in this climate that someone made an accusation against the local midwife in Keith, Agnes Sampson, who found herself investigated by the church. It\u2019s quite remarkable to be able to discover anything at all about a woman living a quiet rural life at this level in society. But, through records of the investigation, we learn that Agnes was a widow, that she had children, and that she\u2019d learned her craft as a healer from her father. We also know she had a lot of clients, both satisfied and dissatisfied, who now came forward with their opinions.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard for us to understand that, even though it may sound cool today, there was simply no such thing as a \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cwhite\u201d witch. Rather, Agnes was someone you might employ to protect you from the malign consequences of witchcraft: sickness in your family or your cattle.<\/p>\n In Agnes\u2019s case, the accusations mounted up, finally coming to the attention of the king himself. She was brought to his palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to be interrogated. Those questioning her used torture, causing her \u201cpain most grievous\u201d. Shaving all the hair off her naked body, they searched it for the \u201cdevil\u2019s mark\u201d: this involved pricking a suspect\u2019s body with a pin until a spot was found which the devil had made insensate. Agnes was stabbed all over.<\/p>\n The record of what Agnes said under these terrible conditions survives, but it\u2019s a tricksy document. Today we understand that a person \u201cconfessing\u201d under duress will say anything to make the pain stop, guessing at whatever it is that the questioners want to hear. So when Agnes tells us that she took part in a meeting of witches, or cooked up a storm at sea, she was prob- ably saying more about the fantasies of her interrogators than telling anything remotely like the truth. But Agnes\u2019s \u201cconfession\u201d made her, under the law, into a witch. Her fate was then inevitable. And on 28 January 1591, she was strangled then burned on Edinburgh\u2019s Castle Hill.<\/p>\n Walking on that hill today, watching the tourists enjoying themselves, it\u2019s chilling to think of the injustices carried out there on women such as Agnes Sampson. The only glimmer of good in this whole story is that, unlike so many others, in this case we know and can commemorate her name.<\/p>\n With her husband, father and brother dead, Olivia became a farmer and businesswoman in her own right <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Shifting dynamics<\/h3>\n
A one-way ticket to Bedlam: the \u201cmadhouse\u201d awaited a seamstress who tried to kill the king<\/h3>\n
The authorities decided that Margaret no longer needed to be restrained with a chain, but no one was ever going to free this ‘dangerous’ woman <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Burning injustice: the grim fate of a healer in the wrong job at the wrong time<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Shaving all the hair off her naked body, Agnes\u2019s accusers searched it for the ‘devil\u2019s mark’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Remarkable discovery<\/h3>\n