What It Was Like to Be a Body Collector During the Black Plague

Between 1346 and 1353, the Black Plague may have killed as many

as 200 million people worldwide. It changed the way we think about public health

particularly body disposal. Millions of corpses piled up, and body collectors risked their lives to clear out the streets for a hefty paycheck

So today, we're going to take a look at what it was like to be a body collector

during the bubonic plague. Time to break out the hand sanitizer. The Black Plague swept across the globe in the mid-1300s

and by the time all was said and done, it would leave as many as 200 million people dead

The world had never seen such a devastating pandemic before, and despite a few close calls, it hasn't since

Not counting if you thought the 1994 Stephen King miniseries The Stand

was an episode of 60 Minutes, it's an easy mistake to make. In a matter of months, hundreds of thousands of people

drop dead in Europe's biggest cities. The Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio witnessed the plague firsthand

According to him, Florence itself turned into one giant tomb piled with bodies, as many

died daily or nightly in the public streets. Of the thousands who perished in their homes, Boccaccio said, the departure was hardly observed

by their neighbors, until the stench of their putrefying bodies carried the tidings

Boccaccio's experiences during the plague would eventually inspire him to write his masterpiece, The Decameron, a book about three young men and seven young women escaping the plague

by telling stories to each other in a secluded villa just outside Florence. This highly influential

novel would pave the way for works like Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and William Shakespeare's

All's Well That Ends Well. However, the epidemic didn't just lead to the creation of highfalutin

works of literature. It also created major problems for cities trying to get rid of all

the diseased corpses. To those who lived through the Black Death's ravages

it literally seemed like the world was coming to an end. At least, it definitely seemed that way to one Irish monk

who recorded the devastation in 1349 and concluded with a pessimistic note

in case anyone should still be alive in the future. Talk about your downer endings

But the world did survive the Black Death, which meant someone had to do the dirty, dangerous

and occasionally disgusting job of cleaning up all the bodies. And those someones were the body collectors

In what might be history's least desirable job, body collectors had to remove plague victims from their homes and from piles on the street so they could be buried

But by the time the collectors came around the bodies usually weren in good shape As Picaccio explained plague victims had certain tumors in the groins or the armpits some of which grew as large as a common apple others as an egg

After the bulging buboes appeared, black spots began to cover the body

If you're watching this video over lunch, you might put down that burrito

It does not get any prettier from here. Those buboes might burst

And if they did, they would leak rancid pus, like the world's most haunted jelly donut

Flea bites could transmit the deadly bacteria Yersinia pestis and become gangrenous. If the disease attacked the lungs, the victim might

cough up a bloody froth before convulsing and expiring. Obviously, all these variables only

made the job of the body collector more foul and more dangerous

If for some reason it still isn't abundantly clear, the plague was extremely deadly. And there

were three different forms of the plague that struck simultaneously. Bubonic, septicemic

or bloodborne, and pneumonic or airborne. If you had to pick which plague to get

you definitely want to choose bubonic. Why? Because it only killed roughly 75% of the people

it infected. The situation in plague-ridden Europe was so dire that a 75% chance of meeting

a historically gruesome end were considered pretty good odds. That's because septicemic

and pneumonic plague had a 100% mortality rate. If you're not good at math, that's the exact same

mortality rate as swallowing a live grenade. As her old buddy Boccaccio reported, merely touching

the belongings of a plague victim could transfer the disease. In the Decameron, he told a terrifying

story of two pigs who nosed through the rags of a plague victim, writing, almost immediately

they gave a few turns and fell down dead, as if by poison. That's like having a canary in a coal

mine and having it burst into flames. Not the most reassuring sign. Body collectors were operating

under no illusions. They knew firsthand just how risky their job was. They may have protected

themselves from catching the plague by using the same techniques as contemporary doctors

smelling sweet flowers. The famous plague doctor costume might look like Big Bird during his

edgelord live journal phase, but the mask was actually designed to block out bad smells

According to the miasma theory of disease that was popular at the time, illnesses like the plague

were spread by foul smells. By filling the beak of the mask with flowers and herbs

doctors believed they could protect themselves from contagion. Body collectors might have tried similar tactics

to make their jobs less deadly. And to be honest, whether it helped prevent plague or not

smelling flowers was preferable to smelling the perpetual graveyard fart of decaying plague victims

that hung over the city. In Florence 60 of the population was wiped out by the plague in a matter of months With victims literally piling up in the streets body collectors found themselves facing a new

problem. They were running out of room to bury the dead. So all across Europe, cities resorted

to mass graves. One Florentine chronicler described the situation, saying, at every church

they dug deep pits. Those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly

and thrown into the pit. The next morning, the body collectors would throw earth on the corpses

and toss in more bodies. According to the same Florentine chronicler, others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth

just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese. That sounds worse than the lasagna it sparrows, and that's bad

Garfield couldn't get through more than two or three slices of that. The chronicler Angulo di Toro wrote that in many places in Siena

great pits were dug and piled deep with a multitude of dead. If the graves became too shallow, another would be hastily dug

Anulo reported with horror, There were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth

that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city

Dogs dragging plague-ridden human remains through the city like old pizza boxes they pulled out of the trash

is an image the Italian tourism industry would prefer to keep off of postcards

And because necessity often breeds creative efficiency, when they ran out of land to bury the corpses in Avignon

the Pope consecrated the Rhone River, and the dead were thrown into the water

Before the plague, European countries tended to have very elaborate funeral rites

Pocaccio wrote that a person who had passed on was supposed to be born on the shoulders of his peers to the church selected by him before his death

Of course, with the sheer number of victims, and so many others terrified of falling ill

nobody really had the time or inclination for fancy funerals during the Black Death

Instead, Boccaccio explains, bodies were transported by a sort of corpse carriers drawn from the baser ranks, who performed such offices for hire

In this sense, body collectors could be seen as opportunists who were capitalizing on the pain and misery of history's worst crisis

And while that's certainly true to a degree, someone had to move the bodies. Score one for the free market. These medieval bills aren't going to pay themselves

Not surprisingly, a body collector loitering outside your house was an extremely unwelcome sight

And not just because it meant the plague had claimed another victim. Some body collectors abused their position

demanding bribes before they would cart off a corpse. In Florence, gangs of shovel-wielding grave diggers known as the Bikini stalked the streets

Because the job was so undesirable, these body collectors earned enormous sums

which they then reportedly spent on booze They were constantly stinking with the effluvia of death and earning more than they ever had done before Others reportedly showed off by laughing drinking and assaulting innocent people

It was like having a Department of Public Health staffed by deputized soccer hooligans

Even worse, some of the bikini gangs broke into houses, threatening to murder people and declare them victims of the plague if they didn't pay up

Gotta admit, that's not a bad racket. Nothing like an apocalyptic pestilence for a scapegoat

The Black Death struck Europe between 1347 and 1351. Body collectors were extremely busy during this period

carting off at least 25 million victims. You might assume that the need for body collectors dried up once the plague ran its course

and society had a chance to catch up a little. But that assumption would be very wrong

The Black Death wasn't the end of the road for body collectors, not by a long shot

Because, like the Spider-Man franchise, the plague kept rebooting itself. England was hit by the plague another six times in the 14th century alone

In fact, the plague continued to cull the population of Europe well into the 1700s

giving body collectors a level of job security many of us can only dream about

A deadly outbreak of the plague struck London in 1665, and by September of that year, the city was drowning under 8,000 new corpses every week

There were so many victims piling up that the city ordered body collectors to work only at night

because the sight of cart after cart piled with corpses reasonably terrified those who hadn't fled the city

Just like Monty Python, body collectors would pull dead carts through the streets

ringing a bell and urging people to bring out their dead. Family members who were quarantined with the sick would lower their expired loved ones to the street

sometimes with a hook on a long pole, like the world's worst claw game. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys wrote that he stopped going out at night

because of his great fear of meeting dead corpses. The fact that Pepys specified dead corpses as opposed to living ones

makes us wonder what the hell else was going on in London at the time

The world descended into chaos during the Black Death. Priests dropped like flies, though there was no one left to administer last rites

In monasteries in Marseille and Carcassonne, every single monk perished. Even worse, every family bond broke apart

According to Boccaccia, brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle. brother by sister, and what is more and scarcely to be believed

fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers

Only one group remained constant and reliable during the plague, the body collectors, who were always there to ring their bells

and pull their carts through the streets, as long as the money stayed good