Michael JECKS: The Leper's Return

It is often difficult to conduct research.

The problem starts with a small area which seems easy enough to resolve, such as: ‘Did houses in the early fourteenth century have glass in their windows?’ but all too often, this start point brings up lots more questions and no answers. As an author, I often find myself becoming so involved in ensuring absolute accuracy that the search widens to an alarming extent. For instance, how did they melt glass? How did they mould it? Was it clear or opaque? How expensive was it? Could anyone under the level of a baron or burgess afford it? It is all very well knowing that deep in the bowels of the new British Library there is a book that tells all, but first one must locate the thing. Sadly, the researcher will probably find that it is hidden in something totally unrelated, such as Medieval Alchemy and the Search for the Philosopher’s Stone, a Feminist View by Ms F. Bloggs – and it will take three or four trips to London, spending hours reading irrelevant material, to find that the volume that is needed ... was destroyed in the Blitz.

However, this is as nothing compared with the problems of editing.

After spending weeks on end living in the British Library, one finally comes upon tons of fascinating data, all rich and absorbing to anyone who is remotely intrigued by how people used to live. If one is fascinated by history, as I am, it is tempting to put it all into a story, but it is a depressing truth that readers are not keen on novels of over 1000 pages. Thus much detail has to be discarded. But then, if one cheats, one can put it into an Author’s Note!

There are many works which look at lepers and their disease through history. Unfortunate sufferers were looked down upon for centuries as being hideously deformed because God sought to mark them out. The view was, if God felt the need to make them so repellent, he must have had his reasons. Naturally that led to the idea that lepers should be excluded from society – for if God chose to punish them, who could doubt that He was right?

The act of declaring someone a leper was probably quite simple: it seems clear they were often denounced by their neighbours. After the allegation had been made, it would have been difficult for someone to offer any defence, because the evidence was all too clear. Any deformity could be interpreted as leprosy by superstitious and uneducated villagers.

The miserable victim would be hauled off before a board of worthy citizens. Not doctors or surgeons necessarily, because not every village could afford one, but people who were thought honest and religious enough for the task. In some places, over in Lorraine, for example, the suspected leper would have been examined by emissaries of the Bishop and one or two known lepers, presumably on the basis that a leper would know what to look for. The man or woman’s blood would be examined and tested with grains of salt, vinegar, and the urine of a young boy, although exactly how this was done I haven’t had the courage to find out. If the person was found to be clear, letters of absolution would be given to them and read out by the local priests so that no one could be in any doubt as to their being safe.

But sometimes mistakes were made. Several people had to fight their cases vigorously For example, there was a well-documented case in Britain where a man was accused of having the disease, and he had to go all the way to London to be examined. The learned doctors signed a legal document stating they thought he was safe to live in the community, which the fellow showed to all and sundry. It is also important to note that the doctors could be most assiduous in proving whether someone did or did not have the disease. In a case in Brentwood in Essex in 1468, the doctors looked for more than forty separate distinguishing symptoms before declaring the poor woman in question fit to stay at home.

Taking the example of a male, a medieval man who had been declared leprous would find life instantly changing for the worse. The priest would console him, before making him swear to tell the truth on a number of questions. Was there leprosy in his family? Had he ever had intercourse with lepers? Had he ever eaten with lepers?

There was a long-standing belief that leprosy was in some way related to sex. Either it was sexually transmitted, especially when sleeping with a menstruating woman, or the sins of the father or mother at the time of conception were so great that the child was born with the disease.

After this interrogation, the leper would be hauled off to church to be put through the ‘Office for the Seclusion of a Leper’. Then the poor devil would be given a pep talk, which would go along these lines:

“While you are diseased, you’ll not go into any house, inn, forge, mill, bakehouse, or brewery; you’ll not drink or wash your hands or laundry at any communal well, fountain, spring, or trough; you’ll eat alone or with lepers; you’ll enter no church during a service, mingle with no crowd, walk down no small streets or narrow alleys; you’ll always stand to leeward of anyone you talk to; you’ll always sound your bell or clapper when begging. You’ll not go out without your cloak; you’ll always wear your gloves; you’ll only drink from your own fountain, or from your own stoup, filled from your own fountain; you’ll touch no child but your own; you’ll always return to your cabin at night.”

The leper was then given a box in which to collect alms, and the priest would make the first donation, standing nearby with his eye on all his parishioners to ensure they followed his example.

Others were fortunate enough to find themselves a place in a hospital.

Leper camps, or ‘lazar’ houses, were charitable institutions set up by the wealthy or by the Church. Usually these places provided for twelve or thirteen of the afflicted, and they would live as religious brethren, accepting the same responsibility of looking after the souls of the living and the dead. The brothers would have to pray for themselves, and also for their patrons. Thus at matins the lepers might say twenty-six paternosters; at prime another fourteen; at nones fourteen; at vespers eighteen; at compline fourteen again. In addition each brother would say twenty-five paternosters for his own sins, and as many again for the souls of the benefactors of the hospital.

One must realise that these people weren’t in quarantine, but were taking the positive action of caring for souls. Although it may seem strange to us, to say the least, these brothers could be punished by being evicted from their hospital. Usually punishments took the form of a day in the pillory or stocks, but for those who were unusually mischievous, the leper master could order that he be thrown out. The miserable, and obviously lonely, fellow would then be forced to beg his own food and find his own drink. Not easy, when a leper was discouraged from approaching other citizens, and couldn’t touch food in the presence of others.

Although all the foregoing refers solely to men, the same comments are, of course, equally applicable to women, but there appear to have been fewer leprous women than men. Whatever the reason for this, convents were available for women, and my researches show that occasionally leper hospitals were designed for both sexes: I understand that the ‘Maudlin’ at Tavistock had spaces for six men and six women.

A leper was defiled, and by touching something else would defile that too. That was why the Church refused to allow lepers to enter enclosed areas, to drink from fountains, or even be buried with ordinary folk. This behaviour would have been reasonably effective in preventing the spread of an infectious disease, but ironically it now seems that leprosy is not very contagious.