London - It was the devastating pandemic that wiped out half of medieval Britain’s population.
But the Black Death had a surprising side-effect .
It inadvertently gave rise to the birth of the English pub as we know it today, according to Robert Tombs, Professor of History at Cambridge University.
He told an audience at the Chalke Valley History Festival how the Black Death, or bubonic plague, which reached this country in 1348 and killed millions, was followed by a period of higher wages and a boom in the brewing industry.
Society was undoubtedly shaken by the trauma the pandemic brought – victims had agonising boils and abscesses, pustules on their legs and under their armpits and pain in the head – but it did not collapse as might have been expected, said Professor Tombs.
The dead were usually buried properly and excavations have shown that some were not just thrown into pits but were buried neatly in individual graves – proof that family and church carried on.
“The unparalleled trauma left surprisingly few visible traces,” he said. “Subjected to unimaginable horror, people carried on, and so the disaster was survived. This resilience even created the opportunity for greater freedom and prosperity.”
Wages rose and prices fell, and the purchasing power of working people hit a new high. Real incomes shot up by 250 percent between 1300 and 1450, he said, and reached a level by 1500 that would not be permanently exceeded until the 1880s.
Unlike in most of the rest of Europe, English wages stayed high even when population numbers slowly recovered.
One consequence of this was that more ale was drunk, brewing became more commercialised, taverns and alehouses for drinking and playing games sprung up and “the English pub was born”. The professor said:
“Brewing of beer was always a big industry. It was usually a cottage in which women brewed beer, because the water was not always safe to drink so weak beer was the standard drink. But in the early 15th century you start having places mainly or permanently devoted to drinking beer and which might also have a skittle alley or something like that.
“That’s the origin of the pub – it’s a particular place, it’s not just that Mrs So and So brews beer occasionally and you can nip round and buy a farthing’s worth of beer.
‘”So and So has now become a full-time brewer and her house is a public house and anyone can go in any time and drink and maybe eat and certainly socialise.
“There have been endless changes in pubs, but that seems to be when it really started as an institution.”
Daily Mail