{"id":8760,"date":"2022-01-10T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T08:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=27758"},"modified":"2022-01-10T09:22:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T08:22:19","slug":"what-were-womens-lives-like-during-the-17th-century-plague","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/what-were-womens-lives-like-during-the-17th-century-plague\/","title":{"rendered":"What were women\u2019s lives like during the 17th-century plague?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By GuestEditor\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 10 January 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The reviled nurses<\/h3>\n

During the long, grim months of 1665, bubonic plague rampaged through the city of London. As thousands lay sick and dying, someone had to perform the unenviable job of nursing the afflicted through the last moments of their lives. That task invariably fell to women.<\/p>\n

When plague broke out, individual parishes were expected to enforce city-wide Plague Orders, which stipulated that two women be appointed to serve as \u2018keepers\u2019 (or nurses) to those found to be infected.<\/p>\n

These women were usually elderly or widowed parish pensioners living off charity, and could be coerced into the task with threats to their alms, food or pensions. One woman awaiting execution in Poole, Dorset took on the role of nurse in exchange for a reprieve.<\/p>\n

Theirs was one of the toughest jobs imaginable, but sympathy and admiration for the plague-nurses was, it appears, in short supply. As one of the few officials allowed entry to infected houses \u2013 working cheek by jowl with sufferers \u2013 they inspired fear and revulsion among a terrified population. To the physician Nathaniel Hodges they were \u201cwretches [who] out of greediness to plunder the dead, would strangle their patients and charge it to distemper in their throats\u201d. Nurses were also accused of \u201csecretly convey[ing] the pestilent taint from sores of the infected to those who were well\u201d. One nurse was, so the story went, crushed under the weight of goods she had stolen from a plague victim.<\/p>\n

And such a reputation was hard to shake. More than 200 years after the Great Plague had claimed its last victim, Florence Nightingale<\/a> was lamenting the fact that nursing had traditionally been left to \u201cthose who were too old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stupid or too bad to do anything else\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet look beyond such rancorous disapproval, and a more nuanced picture of plague-time nursing emerges. When under quarantine during an outbreak in 1636, an Edward Conway specifically asked for \u201ctwo careful keepers\u201d to be sent to attend to him and his friend. Meanwhile, the nurses\u2019 skills in managing care were such that, towards the end of 1665, a William Godfrey asked that, along with three warders, \u201ca nurse or two\u201d be allowed to continue at the Westminster pest house to keep it secure. The nurse of Mr and Mrs Pearce was valued in such esteem that, when she contracted plague too, she was treated alongside them and \u201ccured\u201d. Samuel Pepys encountered a nurse who \u2013 far from being \u201cstupid\u201d \u2013 demanded \u201c10s. per weeke\u201d to take in a sick girl.<\/p>\n

And, contrary to what Florence Nightingale wrote, those who cared for the sick weren\u2019t exclusively \u201cold\u201d, \u201cweak\u201d, and \u201cdrunken\u201d. In fact, women of all classes were well-versed in the secrets of medicine. These included noblewomen like Lady Isham \u2013 who advised her nephew to \u201cware a quill as is filed up with quicksilver\u2026 about your neck\u201d \u2013 and merchant\u2019s wife Mrs Taswell, who gave her son \u201ca herb called angelica, some aromatics and spanish wine\u201d to prevent him catching plague.<\/p>\n

In the 1660s, London was home to at least 60 unlicensed female medical practitioners. It\u2019s unclear if they all remained in the capital when plague broke out, but it is interesting to note that, during the outbreak of 1607, a nurse called Alice Wright did stay in the city and had \u201cmany flock to her every day\u201d near Newgate prison.<\/p>\n