Exploring change and continuity - Cambridge OCR BKey public health problems in medieval Britain

Food supply

In medieval Britain, everyone’s life depended on the harvest. There was always the danger of bad weather and poor harvests, which could cause hunger and famine. Around 10 per cent of the population died in the Great Famine of 1315-1316.

Problems in towns

Towns were more crowded than the countryside and generally more unhealthy places:

• At the end of a market day, the streets were full of food waste and animal dung.
• Most people shared cesspits. Many cesspits had no lining and excrement would leak into other houses’ cellars.
• Gongfermers emptied cesspits but some merely dumped the waste into local streams. This contaminated the water supply and caused diseases such as dysentery.

Plague

The Black Death first struck Britain in 1348. Although this first plague epidemic had died down by 1350, plague was a constant threat. It returned in 1361-1362 and on 20 more occasions before 1500. The disease frightened the population of Britain, especially because medieval people did not know its true cause.