The Last Visitation of the Plague in Sweden: the Case of Bräkne-Hoby, Blekinge in 1710-11

The last visitation of the plague in Sweden: the case of Bräkne-Hoby, Blekinge in 1710-11 By ROGER SCHOFIELD SUMMARY: In an earlier study of the plague in Colyton, Devon the household distribution of deaths was studied to see whether this provided a method of the identifying the causative disease. In this article, a known epidemic of plague in the Swedish parish of Bräkne-Hoby was studied as a means of testing out the generality of the household distribution of deaths. It was discovered that, in this case, the very heavy mortality was due to two radically different means of spreading the disease, initially the classic bubonic one through the rat flea, and latterly, and somewhat surprisingly, the pneumonic one, through the infection of the inhabitants by their own friends and neighbours. One of the difficulties in studying epidemics in the past is that the disease behind the epidemic is often not identified as such in the burial register.1 Although there are certain pointers to the nature of disease, such as its seasonality, these are in general far from conclusive. Accordingly in a study that I made of the epidemic in Colyton, Devon in 1645-6, I decided to investigate the patterns of deaths within the household, just in case this gave additional information on the nature of the infection.2 One method of achieving this is through a ‘family reconstitution’ of the parish register, but for a parish of the size of Bräkne-Hoby, about 2900 inhabitants in 1749; this is a difficult and extremely laborious undertaking.3 In later epidemics, in this part of Sweden, it is possible to avoid this, by also using two alternative sources, a ‘husförhörslängd’, which is a household examination book, and the tables known as the ‘statistiska tabeller’, which contain an aggregate analysis of the parish registers. I therefore decided to take an epidemic in Sweden, in 1710-1, that was spread over several parishes, and to the church officials, at least, seemed to be clearly one of plague. The parish of Bräkne-Hoby is located in Blekinge, a coastal county in the extreme southeast of Sweden. The parish is about 8 kilometers wide, and runs up from the coast in the south, to the border with Kronobergs Län in Småland, some 33 kilometers inland.4 The parish sits astride the main coastal road, which runs from a garrison town, Karlshamn, 22 kilometers to the west, to the major naval port of Karlskrona some 33 kilometers to the east. The population of Bräkne-Hoby was 2837 in 1754, and it was scattered over the whole area in settlements ranging from isolated farmsteads to fair sized villages.5 The economy of the parish was based on agriculture and fishing, and its settlements were located in shallow fertile valleys and clearings, separated by extensive tracts of rock-strewn and wooded terrain. Most of the larger villages were in the south of the parish where the arable land was to be found. Conversely, the far north of the parish was hilly and covered by woods, and the settlements were made up of hamlets and isolated farmsteads, with quite small 1 I am very grateful to Professor Dr Anna Christina Ulfsparre, formerly Landsarkivarie in Lund, who both encouraged me to analyse the parish register of Bräkne-Hoby and who secured copies of the mantalslängder. I am especially grateful to Dr Bodil Persson for her knowledge and unrivalled experience of plague mortality in eighteenth century Sweden. She has been responsible for many of the changes to the original text. 2 See, Schofield, R., ‘An anatomy of an epidemic: Colyton, November 1645 to November 1646’, in P. Slack (ed.), The plague reconsidered, pp. 95-126, 1977, p.121. 3 Leslie Bradley carried out the reconstitution of the parish register, and most of the tabulations, on which this article is based, between 1978 and 1980. Unfortunately he died at the end of 2003, but had kept in touch, and commented extensively on the later versions of this article. Historically the parish, therefore, included the area of the modern, and separate, parish of Öljehult. 4 Bräkne-Hoby, Landsarkivet i Lund, Statistiska Tabeller, GIII:1. The demography of the province to the south and west of Blekinge, the called Skåne, has recently been studied; see. Persson, B. E.B, Pestens gåta Farsoter i det tidiga 1700-talets Skåne. 5 Bräkne-Hoby, Landsarkivet i Lund, Statistiska Tabeller, GIII: 1. 2 parcels of land. As the burial register gave the hamlet, or farmstead, of the residence of the population, it was relatively easy to study the geographical distribution of the epidemic mortality. Figure 1. The essential background to the plague epidemic was war. For it was through war that the military activities across the Baltic, and more particularly in Estonia, that brought the plague to Sweden. The particular form of permanent military billeting, that was current in Sweden at the time, ensured that the effects of movements of troops and sailors would reach deeply into a coastal parish 3 like Bräkne-Hoby. The parish had a considerable number of sailors living permanently in cottages scattered all over its area. When they were not campaigning, the sailors eked out a living either by smallholding, or by labouring. These activities were supplemented by payments in cash, or in kind, raised by way of taxation from other members of the community. In times of war the sailors naturally served in the fleet, whose main southern base was at Karlskrona, returning to the parish at the end of the campaigning season. In 1709 the plague had spread from Turkey northwards through Eastern Europe, reaching the southern coast of the Baltic, where the Swedes were engaged in defending their overseas provinces.6 Refugees from Estonia brought the plague to Stockholm in August 1710, where it inflicted its heaviest mortality at the end of October.7 From Stockholm it was spread by ship to several places, including Kalmar, a naval port some 100 kilometers to the Northeast of Bräkne- Hoby. It reached Kalmar, in September, and then spread into the surrounding countryside.8 Meanwhile, on 20 September a hospital ship from the Nyenska fleet, which had seen active service in Estonia, arrived back at its base in Karlskrona. The ship’s arrival sparked off a severe epidemic in the crowded barracks, and in the surrounding town.9 The naval Chaplain, stationed in Karlskrona, wrote in the burial register that the pestilence began there in the month of November in 1710, and he provided the most secure evidence on the timing of this outbreak.10 In a later entry in the burial register he wrote that the plague continued for the whole of 1711 and only slackened at the end of that year when more than 6,000 had been buried.11 At Karlshamn, a town some 22 kilometers to the west of Bräkne-Hoby, the sickness broke out in December 1710 and in January 1711 six soldiers of the garrison died of ‘plague’.12 Hult describes the ensuing panic in the town with desperate measures being taken by the inhabitants to bury their dead in the churchyard, and not in the official plague burial ground, which was located outside the town. On 23 May the Lord Lieutenant of the county complained that an epidemic disease was reported from the deaneries of Medelstad, Bräkne and Lister, which surrounded Bräkne-Hoby. On 15 June three-quarters of the town of Karlshamn had been infected, and over 400 had died.13 The situation in the countryside was becoming desperate; the disease was reported from every deanery and every parish. Many homesteads were deserted, and the quartering of large numbers of military personnel was causing serious difficulties.14 As the highroad between Karlshamn and Karlskrona crossed the parish of Bräkne-Hoby, it was inevitable that the infection would reach the parish. But was it really plague that caused the massive increase in mortality? As the burial records do not state the cause of death, we have to rely, first on the contemporary accounts we have cited, and second on checking whether the characteristics of the epidemic agree with the accepted characteristics of plague. We shall begin with a general discussion of mortality by plague. 6 Hult, O.T., ‘Pesten i Sverige 1710’, Hygienisk Tidskrift, VIII, Stockholm, 1916, p.95. 7 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p.101. 8 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, pp.143-4. 9 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p.154. 10 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p152. 11 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p.155. 12 Ibid. Wieselgren, in a typical migratory legend, writes that the plague came to Karlshamn in a ship that was sailing adrift with no surviving crew. A man, who went aboard and seized a coat, became the plague’s first victim. Wieselgren, P. Ny Smålands beskrifning, vol. 2, 1844-5, p. 771. 13 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p.156. 14 Hult, ‘Pesten i Sverige’, p.156. 4 I The plague bacillus has a marked toxicity in man. It produces cell death and provokes generalised inflammatory reactions, especially in the nervous tissues.15 The accumulations of the bacillus obstruct the dilated capillaries, leading to bleeding. And in the capsules of the enlarged lymph nodes they infiltrate the nerve fibres with a blood-tinged oedema. It seems that it is this distension and infiltration by the bacilli, which are responsible for the terrible pain of plague. Clinically, two forms of plague are distinguished; differing essentially in the way the bacterium enters the patient. This can be either through the skin (bubonic plague), or through the lungs (pneumonic plague). In the bubonic form of plague the incubation period after a penetration of the skin is from one to six days.

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