RedHanded - ShortHand: The Black Death

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

In just seven years, the bubonic plague killed half of all Europeans – more than 50 million people. We look at its surprising origins on the Mongolian battlefield (where diseased bodies were literally catapulted at the enemy); its unstoppable spread through a terrified Europe; and how it turned cultural, religious and social life in the 14th century completely upside down.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

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where shopping online is still shopping local. Hello. Yes. Welcome to another short hand. It's going to be gross. Great. At the beginning of October, in the year of the incarnation of the Son of God 1346, 12 Genoese galleys entered the harbour of Messina. In their bones, they bore so virulent a disease that anyone who only spoke to them was seized by a mortal illness. and in no manner could evade death.

That's very good. It's very good, isn't it? Those are not my words. They are the words of a man named Michael Platenius, a resident of Messina in, as he said, 1346. Messina's a harbour city in Sicily. And Michael wrote this, after he watched these ships come in,

and the ensuing carnage that ravaged his city as a result. And then that carnage spread all through your... Europe and into Asia. When those 12 ships from the Black Sea docked in Messina, the town was met with a horrific sight. Most of the sailors on board were already dead and rotting, and those who were still alive were gravely ill, and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. I'm still on the Tudor side of TikTok, and I was watching one this morning about Henry VIII and how his ulcers could be smelled from 60 feet away. And there is documentation that his doctor at least once had to remove worms that were living in his legs.

Oh my God. Yep. Good. Let's keep up the theme of this episode. But no, I know we just finished recording the Nosferatu short-hand. Yes. That you will have already heard if you're being good and listening to all of them. It kind of just feels like that, right?

Death comes on a ship. Yes. It did? Yeah. Yeah. The authorities ordered the fleet out of the harbour. but it was already too late. And over the next seven years, what that ship brought in,

killed anywhere between 25 to 200 million people. In just seven years. Earning it the enduring name, the Black Death. But where did it come from? What was it? How did it spread? And how did it leave a lasting impact? On those who survived? This is the shorthand.

The Black Death remains to this day, nearly 700 years later, the greatest ever demographic disaster ever to hit humanity. And just to be clear, I'm sure everybody knows this because they're very smart, but just to clarify, the Black Death is just the name of this particular plague outbreak. It's not the name of the disease itself. It's just the name of this era. And it's important to know that because this wasn't the first plague of its kind. and it also wouldn't be the last. In the 6th century, Byzantium was hit by the plague of Justinian, and in the mid-19th century, so after the Black Death,

China would suffer another outbreak. But neither of these pandemics came close to the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Firstly, let's talk about what the Black Death actually was. For a long, long time, nobody really knew. But after the pulp from the teeth of plague victims were dug, from a mass grave in Italy, we now know what the black death was caused by. It was an infection of the bacterium Yersenia pestis. This bacteria is usually found in small mammals and their fleas.

And the most common way the plague was spread is thought to have been through the bite of an infected flea. And these fleas lived on rats and other rodents, which like to live around humans. They infected the rats, the plague killed the rats, and so the fleas would then go looking for alternative sources of food. I read that once like a rat colony is infested with plagues, it will kill all of the rats in that colony within two weeks. Wow. But it doesn't kill the flea. This is the key thing.

The flea is like a carrier, it's not affected by the plague. So I think, obviously, again, you guys are very smart, but a lot of people mistakenly think it's carried by the rats. But rats aren't typically running around biting people for it to spread this quickly. it's the fleas themselves. But there are other ways in which people could catch the plague. It wasn't all through flea bites. It could also be spread through contact with contaminated fluids or tissue and also by inhaling infectious droplets,

both of which just made it easier for the disease to spread. The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago, though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the black death may have existed in Europe as early as 3,000 BC. We just don't know for sure. But we can probably safely say this particular strain that caused the black death

came from the east. Because even before those 12 death ships pulled into port at Messina, Europe had been awash with rumours about a great pestilence that was cutting through China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt. So what had happened to those poor souls

aboard those ships that arrived in Messina? Well, there had been a siege in the thriving port town of Kaffa on the Crimean Peninsula, which is now in modern-day Ukraine. The Mongols decided that they wanted all of the Genoese who lived and traded there to fuck off back to Italy. The Genoese thought otherwise, and they hold themselves up behind the city's high walls. And the attacking Mongols quickly began to succumb to some sort of horrible disease. It looked like the siege would soon be over. The Genoese were thrilled. But then, the surviving Mongols, who had not died as a result of this horrible plague afflicting them, hatched a new plan.

Middle Ages biological warfare in the most grim way possible. They started catapulting into Kaffa their infected dead comrades. The Genoese looked on in horror as bloated, decaying, pus-riddled bodies, rain down upon them. They fled the city and headed to Constantinople and then onto Italy. And the rest is history. Now, of course, this wasn't the only entry point for the deadly plague into Europe. Trade routes with the East in general are thought to have been the culprit.

Rats and their fleas hopped on board trading ships carrying grains, spices and textiles. At the time, Italy was the centre of trade with the East. and it is very much ground zero for the outbreak of the plague in Europe. Once the Black Death was in Italy, it took hold and spread rapidly. In three months, 20% of the population of Italy was dead. It's mind-blowing numbers we're dealing with in this episode. Like, honestly, as you're reading, you're just like, I can't even fathom 20% of Italy's population dead in three months.

That's bonkers. So let's take a look at the symptoms of the black death. Typically, it started with a flea bite, but like we said, there were other ways in which people could get it. There'd be excessive swelling around the site if you were bitten, and then an enlargement of the lymph nodes, particularly in the groin, armpits and neck. Soon the victim's body would also be covered in black lumps or bubos,

which is where the name bubonic plague comes from. Now, from contemporaneous reports, we know that the infected person would be overcome with a feeling of coldness, prickling of the skin a bit like pins and needles, extreme fatigue, depression, a raging fever, and an agonizing headache. Their bodies would also often erupt in blisters with the skin taking on a mottled discoloration. 80% of those infected died, usually within a week.

Though if the person had caught the plague by breathing in infected water droplets from the coughing of an infected person, rather than being bitten by a flea, usually they'd be dead within a few days. This type of infection is known as pneumonic plague. It infected the lungs, leading to severe breathing difficulties. And before long, the person will be hacking up blood.

The people of Middle Ages Europe were horrified. They had no idea what was going on or how to stop it. religious leaders tried at first to keep things calm, but no amount of prayer was stemming the flow of death. Physicians at the time theorised that the infections were caused by everything from an imbalance of the four humours, poisonous vapours and a corruption of the air, to eclipses and conjunctions of various planets. They recommended that people used herbs and spices like nutmeg, ginger, coriander, stuff like that,

to block the myasma. fires of wormwood raged across towns and cities as people believed that the smoke would purify the air and everyone walked around with sponges soaked in vinegar clamped firmly under their noses. Like it really is just like a hellscape. It's just like fires raging everywhere, like bodies piling up in front of you

and this abject fear that even the people you would have looked up to before. So religious leaders, priests, nobody has the answer for what's going on. And the crucial thing about the Black Death is people also realize that it wasn't just killing peasants, it wasn't just killing ordinary people. It was killing priests, people who were coming out to perform the last right. It was also killing royalty, like big names in the Royal Game at the time, was succumbing to the death.

So people just felt like if they can't protect us, if they can't stop this, if they don't know what this is, what fucking chance do we have? I'm sure there was a Pope who thought that if he sat by a fire all day, that it would protect him. But because the buvos happen in your armpits and in your pants, which is where you sweat. Yeah. Not a good idea. Yes, I read about that Pope. He was basically convinced he became very, very paranoid.

He becomes convinced, like, I just need to stay away from everybody. So he locks himself up away in his, you know, papal chambers. He does actually survive, and his physician also survive. They both get sick, but they come out of it alive. And yeah, it's just this, this horrifying feeling of at first he's trying to calm everybody down. He's trying to tell everybody it's going to be okay. They just need to pray more. They were conducting masses all the time, like every hour on the hour, just mass after mass, after mass.

And nothing was stopping it. In fact, as people gathered together, more people were just dying. And I guess this Pope just had like a, I think he probably would have had a total crisis of faith and what's going on. He's like, you know, I'm doing everything I think I should be doing. and God has abandoned us. That is definitely the overarching feeling that people would have been going through. So doctors, who were still desperately

trying to think of anything they could to help people, told the public things like not to sleep on their backs because that might make it worse. They also told them to eat lots of lettuce, which sure, can't hurt, but probably didn't solve the problem. They also tried rubbing dried human feces

onto the bodies of victims, which when you've got blistered skin open sores and bubbles everywhere, I think is just going to hasten death. And at the time there were also, of course, the old and timely entrepreneurs who came out not scared at all of death. Why not make a quick buck while you can? And they were selling the rich all sorts of potions and amulets and all sorts of things. And one of the key things they liked to sell people was ambigris to sniff on. Now, Ambergris is basically sperm whale thrower. which we actually still use today in fancy perfumes

and is more expensive gram for gram than gold. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's like a horrible thick yellow substance, very, very sought after. And if you ever wear any fancy French perfumes, it will probably have ambergris in it. But it was no good. The plague seemed unstoppable. And people became convinced that this was the start of the last job. judgment, the end of days. It was pestilence, one of the four horsemen laying the way for the

end of the world. Makes sense. Oh yeah, I would absolutely be thinking that. I love the word pestilence. It is a good word. And it's easy to see why people were sure that the end was extremely fucking nigh. In some cities, the death rate was 80%. 80%. And as the bodies piled up, the authorities couldn't keep up with clearing them away or burying the dead. So, corpses piled up in the streets, rotting and putrid. And there was nothing anyone could do, but watch on in horror as starving dogs tore the corpses apart. Yeah, and that's not poetic license,

that I've read a lot of, like, reports that were written at the time by anyone who was literate. And that is from a direct account of just some, a priest who was walking down the street and, just, you know, mentally falling apart as he's watching human bodies pile up and just being torn apart by dogs. Like, I cannot even imagine how nightmarish this entire situation would have been. Yeah, we came across that in The Werewolf, Shorthand that we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like a lot of horror law, especially European horror law, is definitely going to stem from this. Because there is no way this wouldn't have had a significant traumatic impact through the generations. Absolutely. It truly would have felt like God had abandoned these people. And since religion clearly wasn't working, with even priests and cardinals dying on a daily basis, what hope was left? The courts closed, shops closed, bakeries closed,

society completely fell apart. People were starving and terrified and desperate. But simultaneously to this, I do have to mention that a lot of people also were like, well, if I'm going to die and this is the end of days, maybe I should also start living as if this is my last day. And so there was also simultaneously to a lot of people being terrified, holding themselves up in their houses, just feeling like all hope is lost.

There were a lot of people out partying. And even like priests and cardinals and nuns were just getting on it. There's lots of reports from the time that people took up with sex going through the roof, alcohol consumption going through the roof, gambling. and they were doing it everywhere. They were having parties left, right and centre because people were like, if this really is the end, I'm going to enjoy myself.

Solomon Gamara. So, yeah, like we said, Italy is definitely ground zero for the infection. It's where it comes into Europe, it's where it starts. And the rest of Europe were definitely hearing about what was going on in Italy. But at first nobody took it seriously. Nobody believed that it could be as bad

as the Italians were saying it was. I can't imagine people. having that opinion about a pandemic. But soon, they'd have no choice. And by the spring of 1348, plague was in France. And by that summer, it was in the UK. Once in the UK, the plague spread at an estimated rate of five miles a day, decimating towns and villages.

And this totally changed the UK forever by bringing an end to feudalism. How, I'm going to tell you. At the time, the UK had a population of about 5 to 6 million people, with 90% of those people living in the countryside are serfs who worked the land. After the plague had killed off in some places 80% of the population, there was a huge shortage of workers. Up until then, these people had been bound by law to their laws. But once 80% of everyone you know is dead,

you probably aren't too bothered about the law anymore. So peasants walked away from their lands and went in search of higher wages. They basically like, I don't have to fucking stay here. What are you going to do? If the Lord next door is going to offer me more money to work his land, I'm going to take it. And no one could stop them.

Edward III, the king at the time, did pass a law to say that peasants had to accept the same wages they had been paid five years before the plague started, but the peasants thought, fuck that. there had been a total attitude shift and the respect for the class structure which had governed England up until then was totally destroyed.

I also think seeing Lords die as well of the plague that was killing you, killing them, you're like, maybe we're not so different after all. Why do I have to listen to what you've got to say? What the fuck are you going to do? And who was going to chase after them around the countryside when you could get infected and drop dead yourself? Yeah, I didn't think of that.

The bubonic plague is the Great Unifier. 100%. And eventually, in the UK, surfed and faded away altogether. But before we continue on our journey with the Black Death, I do want to tell you a story about a little village in the Peak District here. I read this and I really wanted to include it, but it wasn't actually about the Black Death,

but I do want to tell the people because I thought it was, it's an amazing act of sacrifice and heroism. So it was during another outbreak, the one that took place in 1665. But basically the plague was. spreading through the UK and it had come all the way up into the Peak District, which is in Derbyshire in England, like far up north. And the people of this village, like a few people get infected and they know that it hasn't spread beyond them yet because they're not hearing any

stories of it there. So they decide no one is going to leave. Whether you're sick, whether you're well, no one is going to flee now that we know it's here. And they put out a stretch of boundary stones beyond which all of the villages promise they will not cross. And like people from the other towns just come and leave them food and supplies at the boundary stones. And like almost that entire village died, but a few, like some of them did obviously survive. And yeah, they just made this huge sacrifice because a natural instinct would have been, oh, fuck, my neighbor's sick. I'm going to flee. I'm going to save myself.

And I just thought it was very, very nice that this village came together. And they did stop it. They stopped it. It didn't go any further. That's amazing. So, yeah, I just thought that was a very nice story. and it was also the bubonic plague, it just wasn't this particular outbreak of it.

And let's get back to that particular outbreak. In the midst of the Black Death pandemic, increasingly people felt that the church just couldn't help them. And they started to wonder why God was punishing them. Was it retribution for their sins like greed, blasphemy, heresy and fornication? Some believed that it was down to all of the wars

raging across Europe at the time. Some also believed that it was off the back of our Holy Grail episode last year, that it was because they'd failed in the Crusades, and God was punishing them. Lots of theories floating around. But whatever it was, the church were useless. And so the flagellants were born,

a Christian religious movement who directly sought to undermine the Catholic Church. The flagealidents began leading processions in towns and cities across Europe, And they were made up of people from all sorts of demographics, but it was really interesting that a lot of upper class men joined the flagellants. Like that is the main starting point of the movement. And depending on where they were, geographically speaking, the flagellants would be wearing big, pointy hats in either black, red or white. And if you look at the images of the ones that are wearing the big white ones,

it really makes them look like the KKK. Like I wonder if there was some influence that was taken from that. The KKK really like the Knights Templar. Okay, yeah. But I can see why. I can see why, yeah. So these groups would roam around into areas and carry out huge public displays of penance and punishment.

As their name suggests, the flagelilence would march whilst beating themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal. It was meant as an act of contrition, a desperate plea for God to forgive them, and show mercy and end the plague once and for all. The flagellant movement connected with the people who felt powerless in the face of this inexplicable tragedy.

And this scared the shit out of the Pope and all of the religious elites. They couldn't have people cracking on with this sort of DIY Christianity. Yeah, I mean, it really points to, like, the solution is not coming from the church, and these random people outside of the establishment, are saying that they're going to give it to people. Like, that completely undermines everything. Mm-hmm.

They can't have that. And eventually, in the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated. Though it was probably also because the flagellants, rather than stopping the spread of the plague, made it worse by going from town to town, bleeding and screaming everywhere. Yeah, that wouldn't have helped. I think that's probably going to, yeah, push it. So when this failed, some... in Europe began to suspect that this evil curse had befallen them

because they had allowed Jews to live in Christian Europe. And so, predictably, the pogroms began. Jews were soon being exiled or exterminated across Europe. Thousands died, often by being burned alive. Desperate to escape vast numbers of the Jewish population eventually fled to Eastern Europe. though of course that did nothing to stop the plague spread It was thought that the Jews

Like obviously there's a lot of anti-Semitism to it And they're just like who can we turn on they turn on the Jews But there's also a theory for while there is records that show that Jewish people were also dying of the plague There is a theory that fewer Jewish people died And that's why the Christians started to believe That it was a curse caused by them onto Christians And it was because the Jewish religious rights

require you to wash your hands several times a day. Of course, yeah. And obviously middle ages, Christians, like there is no requirement to do that and in the middle ages who the fuck was washing themselves. But the Jews were. And so they think that that could have been why fewer people in the Jewish population were dying.

And when the Christians realize this, they're like, you fucking did this. And they turn on them, which I think is quite interesting. And Christian soldiers, very famously stank. The Muslims and the crusades are like, you can smell them coming a fucking mile off. So yeah, it does make sense with why that would have happened. Obviously the raging antisemitism and also possibly them having made a connection between fewer Jewish people dying.

And it was years before the disease finally died out, though it didn't disappear altogether. It came back in waves every decade or so for the next 300 years. But thankfully, it was never as bad again. Probably because the population now had some immunity, but also because of change in policy. Officials in the city of Ragusa, Sicily, saw that they were able to slow the spread by keeping sailors who arrived in their ports in isolation until it was clear that they weren't infected.

Sailors were held for 40 days or a quarantine, which is where we get that term from. I love that one. After the black death, Europe was changed forever. It was a massive turning point in history. For better, some ways, like the end of serfdom in the UK, but also, of course, in many ways for the worse. The Black Death killed millions and saw the eradication of countless Jews from the continent.

But like we said, it also ended feudalism in the UK. And in Italy, it kick-started the Renaissance, again totally transforming society and culture forever. And it's still out there today. None of us are safe. No. I have most definitely watched an episode of Monsters Inside Me where a woman goes on holiday to New York and gets the fucking bubonic plague. It's out there. Watch it. She goes to hospital and they're like, you've made me watch it before. You've got the plague. Like it's wild. The World Health Organization actually estimates that there are still a thousand to three thousand cases of literal plague every year.

Yeah. And the effects of the black death may still be kicking around in some people's bodies today. With the pandemic, having written itself into our very genes. A group of international researchers in 2022 hypothesized that with a death toll as high as the black deaths, because remember, in most places it was killing up to 80% of people, it likely acted as a gigantic natural selection event, where the survivors likely had some genetic advantage over those who had died.

And then obviously because they survived, they went on to pass on their genes at a greater rate to the next generation, et cetera, et cetera. So, after analyzing DNA samples taken from graves in London and Belgium from those who died before during and after the Black Death,

researchers began to identify if there were specific gene variants that were more common in those who survived. So basically, if there's a shift from their prevalence in the... those people before and then after like is there a big change of a particular variant which is really interesting and obviously they're only speaking for europe because they only take samples from London and Belgium so we can't speak because the plague obviously spreads everywhere but this is

very interesting they focused on 400 immunity related genes and looked to see if they changed before and after the event so did any become more common indicating that they were passed on by survivors and bingo they found one gene in particular that stood out. The ERAP2 gene. It has two versions or variants, ERAP2A and ERAP2B. ERAP2A coded for full-length healthy proteins. ERAP2B coded for proteins that cut off too soon. And the ERAP2 gene plays a vital role in training other immune cells. So if someone had two copies of the type A variant, that increased their level of survival by 20%, with the theory being that this led to more immune training

and a better immune response when they were faced with the plague. But it's not all good because now having two copies of the type A variant has been associated with Crohn's and with lupus, both autoimmune diseases. So it could be

that this is down to an overreacting immune system and an increase in the population with the two copies of the type A variant could have led to an increase in these conditions. So there you go out. That's really interesting. Very interesting. So yes, if your ancestors survived the plague, which they probably did if you're here and you're European,

you may have increased immunity, but it could also be a downside. Maybe that's why I've never had COVID. There you go. Who knows? We can't tell you because we're being kicked out of this studio. So that is it, guys. That is the shorthand on the Black Death. It's super, super interesting.

And we'll definitely do more of these medically ones in the future because they're fascinating. So stay safe. Don't go to New York. Don't get bitten by fleas and be careful. Wash your hands. And we'll see you next time. Goodbye. Bye.

Thank you.