What made medieval towns so unhealthy?

People lived crowded together with cesspits beside their wells, butchers threw offal into the street, and there was no drainage and no clean water supply.

Why were monasteries healthier places than towns?

They were sited where clean water could be piped in, they had latrines flushed by running water and places to wash, and their wealth paid for keeping it all in order.

When did the Black Death reach Britain, and how many died?

It arrived in 1348 and swept the country through 1349, killing somewhere between a third and a half of the population.

What did people at the time believe had brought the Black Death?

That God was punishing sin, that bad air carried it, that an unusual alignment of the planets had poisoned the atmosphere, and in some places that strangers had poisoned the wells.

AQA GCSE History 8145

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Health and the People in Britain, c1000 to the Present Day

Public health in the Middle Ages

2 things to know
Paper 2 section A

Overview

Why medieval towns were unhealthy, rakers, why monasteries were healthier, the Black Death of 1348 and its believed and real causes, treatments and flagellants, how towns kept plague out, and the Statute of Cambridge.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Key term

What was a raker employed to do?

Key term

What actually caused the Black Death?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
What made medieval towns so unhealthy?
Model answer
People lived crowded together with cesspits beside their wells, butchers threw offal into the street, and there was no drainage and no clean water supply.
2
What was a raker employed to do?
Model answer
Cart rubbish and dung away from a town's streets, although there were far too few of them to keep a growing town clean.
3
Why were monasteries healthier places than towns?
Model answer
They were sited where clean water could be piped in, they had latrines flushed by running water and places to wash, and their wealth paid for keeping it all in order.
4
When did the Black Death reach Britain, and how many died?
Model answer
It arrived in 1348 and swept the country through 1349, killing somewhere between a third and a half of the population.
5
What did people at the time believe had brought the Black Death?
Model answer
That God was punishing sin, that bad air carried it, that an unusual alignment of the planets had poisoned the atmosphere, and in some places that strangers had poisoned the wells.
6
What actually caused the Black Death?
Model answer
Bacteria carried by fleas living on rats, producing the swellings of the bubonic form, together with a form in the lungs that passed straight from person to person.

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America, 1840–1895: Expansion and Consolidation

America, 1920–1973: Opportunity and Inequality

Conflict and Tension Between East and West, 1945–1972

Conflict and Tension in Asia, 1950–1975

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ABlight destroyed the potato crop the poor lived on.

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