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Speaker 1: Pushkin. At the beginning of September sixteen sixty five, a

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Speaker 1: roll of cloth from London arrived in a village named Eam.

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Speaker 1: Eam was a lively mining and farming community surrounded by

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Speaker 1: the bleak and beautiful hills of the English Peak District.

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Speaker 1: It was a world away from London, which, with a

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Speaker 1: population of about half a million people, was one of

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Speaker 1: the largest cities on the planet, and it was a

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Speaker 1: world away from London's Great Plague, an outbreak of the

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Speaker 1: terrifying disease that was in the process of killing a

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand Londoners. The roll of cloth was received by

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Speaker 1: a tailor's assistant, George Rickers. Sniffing the material, George noted

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Speaker 1: an unpleasant smell and concluded that the cloth had become damp.

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Speaker 1: He unrolled it and hung it in front of a

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Speaker 1: fire to dry. As he did that, hungry fleas sprang

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Speaker 1: off the cloth. They began to look for their next meal,

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Speaker 1: and George Vickers was close at hand. Within a week,

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Speaker 1: he was dead of the plague. Plague is caused by

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Speaker 1: a kind of bacteria carried by black rats and their fleas.

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Speaker 1: An infected flea finds its insides blocked up by the

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Speaker 1: bacteria's secretions, which means that infected fleas are endlessly trying

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Speaker 1: to feed on the blood of rats, gagging on the

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Speaker 1: meal and vomiting it back into the bite wound. The

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Speaker 1: vomited blood, of course, is now infested with plague bacteria,

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Speaker 1: so the rat becomes infected, too, ready to spread the

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Speaker 1: disease to other fleas. Meanwhile, the flea, ravenous because it

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Speaker 1: didn't manage to keep down its meal, hops onto another

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Speaker 1: rat and tries again. Eventually, the rats all dye, which

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Speaker 1: time the bacteria bloated fleas have turned to biting other things,

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Speaker 1: such as George Vickers. The outbreak of plague in an

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Speaker 1: isolated village such as Iam must have filled the villagers

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Speaker 1: with dread. They would have already heard the apocalyptic news

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Speaker 1: of the deaths in London, and they would have known

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Speaker 1: that plague is deadly. It can cause pneumonia, blood poisoning,

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Speaker 1: and most notoriously, bubos, painful swellings of infected lymph nodes

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Speaker 1: in the neck, the armpit, or the groin. The bubos

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Speaker 1: are so distinctive as to give the disease one of

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Speaker 1: its names, pubonic plague, plague can be treated today, But

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Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five there was nothing to do but

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Speaker 1: wait a few days to see if you died painfully,

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Speaker 1: which about half the time you would. But what happened

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Speaker 1: next is a story that they still tell in the

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Speaker 1: village of em and a story with more than one

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Speaker 1: less and to teach the rest of us about what

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Speaker 1: happens in the face of a pandemic. I'm Tim Harford,

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Speaker 1: and you're listening to cautionary tales on a bleak and

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Speaker 1: beautiful hillside fifteen minutes walk from the church at the

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Speaker 1: center of Eyam. In the middle of a field by

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Speaker 1: the Riley Farm, there's a low stone wall that traces

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Speaker 1: an area roughly the shape of a tear drop and

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Speaker 1: roughly the size of a family room. The wall circles

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Speaker 1: a tiny graveyard, and the name on every gravestone is Hancock.

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Speaker 1: Over the course of eight days, Elizabeth Hancock lost her

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Speaker 1: husband and all six of her children to the plague.

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Speaker 1: Nobody could help her for fear of catching the disease themselves,

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Speaker 1: so Elizabeth dragged each member of her family up the

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Speaker 1: hill near the Riley farm and buried them there in

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Speaker 1: the field by herself. They say that the people of

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Speaker 1: the next village, Ovah Stony Middleton stood on a hill

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Speaker 1: near by and watched her, but they dared not come closer.

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Speaker 1: This year, a lot of journalists have written stories about i'am.

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Speaker 1: Not many of them grew up in the area, but

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Speaker 1: I did. About ten miles away. We'd visit Eam on

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Speaker 1: school trips and hear the tales the folk of E'am told.

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Speaker 1: They aren't stories you easily forget, not when you're standing

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Speaker 1: on that lonely hillside looking at the gravestones of the

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Speaker 1: Hancock children. But it's not only the suffering that sticks

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Speaker 1: in the memory. It's the sacrifice. Before I tell you

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Speaker 1: about it, let me tell you a little more about

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Speaker 1: E'am's surroundings, because they're going to be important. E'am, as

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Speaker 1: I mentioned, lies in the English Peak District. It's a

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Speaker 1: beautiful part of the world where low rounded hills are

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Speaker 1: accented by bleak moors and stark gritstone cliffs which we

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Speaker 1: locals call edges. The Peak District was the UK's first

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Speaker 1: ever National park, not because it was the grandest or

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Speaker 1: the most majestic piece of the British countryside, I think,

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Speaker 1: but because it's an oasis of wilderness surrounded on all

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Speaker 1: sides by cities and large towns Manchester, Sheffield, Stoke on Trent,

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Speaker 1: Derby and my own childhood hometown, Chesterfield. And that windswept

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Speaker 1: countryside surrounded by dense populations was to be more than

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Speaker 1: a backdrop for the drama that was to unfold. It

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Speaker 1: was to shape the fate of e'am because when the

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Speaker 1: plague arrived in Eyam, one thing became clear. It couldn't

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Speaker 1: be allowed to leave. Manchester, Sheffield and the other nearby

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Speaker 1: towns were plague free. They had to stay that way.

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Speaker 1: The plague was at first a slow moving crisis. George

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Speaker 1: Vickers had died early in September and the deaths continued

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Speaker 1: throughout the winter, but the plague only truly erupted in

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Speaker 1: June the next year. Three people died on the twelfth

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Speaker 1: of June, five people died on the fifteenth. More were

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Speaker 1: falling ill. Something had to be done. The man to

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Speaker 1: do it was the young village priest rector William Mompson,

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Speaker 1: just twenty eight years old and new to his job.

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Speaker 1: But he formulated an extraordinary plan. On the twenty fourth

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Speaker 1: of June sixteen sixty six, William Mompson gathered the villages

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Speaker 1: together outside in a sheltered little spot that had come

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Speaker 1: to serve as their socially distanced church. The priests told

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Speaker 1: them what they must do. They must all stay in

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Speaker 1: the village until the plague had gone, or until all

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Speaker 1: of them were dead. It must have been tempting to flee,

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Speaker 1: but the villagers faced down their fear. They agreed to

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Speaker 1: quarantine themselves to save the rest of northern England. The

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Speaker 1: village wouldn't be without help. The folk of nearby Stony

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Speaker 1: Middleton would come and leave supplies at what became known

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Speaker 1: as the Boundary Stone, a rock with six holes drilled

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Speaker 1: into it. Villagers of I'am filled the holes with vinegar

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Speaker 1: as a disinfectant. Then they left coins in the vinegar

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Speaker 1: as payment. Villagers of Stony Middleton would collect the money

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Speaker 1: and leave the food. Nobody needed to get too close.

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Speaker 1: Nobody outside i'am wanted to. The Duke of Devonshire, a

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Speaker 1: wealthy landowner who lived at a palace just a few

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Speaker 1: miles away called Chatsworth House, promised to supplement that with

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Speaker 1: free food and supplies in gratitude for the self sacrifice

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Speaker 1: of e'am. But Ultimately, the villagers of i'am would be

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Speaker 1: on their own, trapped together with the rats and the

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Speaker 1: fleas and the relentlessly spreading plague. In July and August

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Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty five villagers would die. Among them

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Speaker 1: were Elizabeth Hancock's husband and six children, every single remaining

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Speaker 1: member of a large family called the Thorpes, and Catherine Mompesson,

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Speaker 1: William's wife. It's hard not to compare ourselves to the

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Speaker 1: villagers of Iam. There are unmistakable echoes. The placing of

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Speaker 1: goods at the boundary stone is much like our modern

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Speaker 1: practice of leaving groceries on the doorstep of elderly relatives

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Speaker 1: or neighbors, ringing the doorbell and then stepping six feet back.

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Speaker 1: But the heroic story of Iam sits uncomfortably with our

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Speaker 1: own response to the pandemic. Look at the TV or

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Speaker 1: surf the internet, and it won't be long before you

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Speaker 1: encounter someone who doesn't seem to care. There was the

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Speaker 1: professional soccer player for Manchester City, yes the same Manchester

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Speaker 1: that the people of Eam had sacrificed themselves to protect,

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Speaker 1: if newspaper reports are to be believed, and he apologized

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Speaker 1: rather than denying them. He decided during the UK's lockdown

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Speaker 1: that it would be okay to invite a friend to

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Speaker 1: his home and a couple of prostitutes. A couple of

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Speaker 1: miles from Eam lies the idyllic Kerbar Edge. The local

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Speaker 1: police tweeted drone footage shaming people who'd driven there from

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Speaker 1: a nearby town to walk their dogs. It was a

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Speaker 1: little over the top, but the police were worried about

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Speaker 1: minor infractions escalating into widespread breakdown. The police chief's counsel

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Speaker 1: in the UK warned that the virus could bring out

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Speaker 1: the worst in humanity. Our self centeredness seemed so pathetic

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Speaker 1: in the light of what we know about the people

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Speaker 1: of Eam. They willingly stayed in their plagueracked village when

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Speaker 1: we are simply asked to shelter in our virus free homes.

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Speaker 1: What happens? One family decided to make a sightseeing drive

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Speaker 1: from London to the picture Escu Lake District, a five

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Speaker 1: hundred mile round trip, all away from one corner of

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Speaker 1: England to the opposite corner. The police stopped them and

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Speaker 1: issued a press release calling them clowns. What have we become?

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Speaker 1: What would the people of Iam think of us? If

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Speaker 1: they could see us now. My answer might surprise you.

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Speaker 1: We're telling ourselves two stories here. One is about the

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Speaker 1: astonishing self sacrifice of the people of Iam who volunteered

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Speaker 1: to isolate themselves with a deadly plague, who, like Elizabeth Hancock,

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Speaker 1: found themselves digging graves for their spouses and their children.

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Speaker 1: The other is about the spoiled, selfishness of modern society,

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Speaker 1: of those who won't make the slightest change to their

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Speaker 1: own plans to eat, drink and sunbathe, regardless of the

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Speaker 1: deadly ris they're imposing on the vulnerable people around them.

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Speaker 1: Both those stories have a little truth in them, but

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Speaker 1: both those stories are leading us astray. We often tell

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Speaker 1: ourselves that in a crisis, the thin veneer of civilization cracks,

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Speaker 1: they'll be looting and disorder, or, as the UK Police

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Speaker 1: put it, the worst in humanity. If there's an earthquake

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Speaker 1: or a hurricane, it's as important to get the army

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Speaker 1: on the scene to drive off the looters as it

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Speaker 1: is to get food and medicine. The truth is rather different.

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Speaker 1: In a crisis, few things are more certain than the

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Speaker 1: fact that most people respond with decency and solidarity. International

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Speaker 1: aid experts even have a list of disaster myths. Disasters

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Speaker 1: bring out the worst in people, with looters and bandits

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Speaker 1: roaming free a myth. People are helpless and can't take

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Speaker 1: responsibility for their own safety, a myth. At the outbreak

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Speaker 1: of the Second World War in Europe, the received wisdom

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Speaker 1: was that when civilians were bombed, their morale and perhaps

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Speaker 1: civilization itself, would shatter like the glass in their windows.

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Speaker 1: Winston Churchill believed this, so did Adolf Hitler, so did

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Speaker 1: their generals. They were wrong. Every school child in the

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Speaker 1: UK knows the story of the Blitz spirit of how

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Speaker 1: as Hitler's luftwaffer dropped bomb after bomb over London in

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Speaker 1: late nineteen forty, Londoners refused to be cowed. The glass

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Speaker 1: did indeed chatter, but the British upper lip remained as

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Speaker 1: stiff as ever. One pub put up a sign, our

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Speaker 1: windows are gone, but our spirits are excellent. Come in

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Speaker 1: and try them. Other shops, their frontages torn apart, advertised,

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Speaker 1: more open than usual. Eighty years later, we still feel

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Speaker 1: nostalgia for how people pulled together. These stories are true,

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Speaker 1: but as the writer Rutka Bregman points out in his

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Speaker 1: new book Humankind, we forget. Yet how surprising the stoic

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Speaker 1: response was and the lesson was ignored. The Allies made

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Speaker 1: the same mistake when contemplating their own bombing campaign of

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Speaker 1: German cities. There was little sign that morale had been

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Speaker 1: dented in London or other English bomb hit cities such

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Speaker 1: as Birmingham or Hull. Yet Churchill's friend and adviser, Frederick

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Speaker 1: Lindermann told him that morale was cracking and that when

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Speaker 1: German cities were thoroughly bombed, it would break the spirit

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Speaker 1: of the German people. Predictably, it didn't. Decades later, carpet

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Speaker 1: bombing didn't break the spirit of the North Vietnamese either.

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Speaker 1: We're social animals. When times are tough, we look out

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Speaker 1: for each other. The story of the blitz spirit is inspiring.

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Speaker 1: What's depressing is that we keep forgetting it. More than

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Speaker 1: depressing too, Sometimes it can be tragic. When Hurricane Katrina

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Speaker 1: hit New Orleans in two thousand and five, the response

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Speaker 1: of the police, the media, and nearby areas was all

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Speaker 1: shaped by the sad fact. But they just couldn't believe

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Speaker 1: that the citizens of New Orleans might pull together to

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Speaker 1: look out for each other. One story vividly told on

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Speaker 1: the New Floodlines podcast. Involved Fred Johnson, the head of

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Speaker 1: a community group, Black men of Labor. The morning after

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Speaker 1: the hurricane, Johnson took a look at the damage, then

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Speaker 1: went to the Hyatt Hotel where the authorities were coordinating

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Speaker 1: their response. The Mayor was stationed there, as were the

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Speaker 1: command centers for the National Guard, the Army Corps, the

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Speaker 1: Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Fire Department, and the police.

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Speaker 1: Fred Johnson bumped into the police Chief, Eddie Compass. I

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Speaker 1: need your help. I need your help, said Police Chief Compass.

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Speaker 1: He was agitated, he was shaking Fred Johnson, but it

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Speaker 1: was natural to ask for help in such a crisis,

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Speaker 1: and Fred was a community leader. He had a whole

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Speaker 1: group of volunteers he could call on. So what did

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Speaker 1: the police chief want him to do? Organize evacuations of

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Speaker 1: flooding areas perhaps, or distribute food and water. No, the

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Speaker 1: Chief of police wanted Fred Johnson to gather all the

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Speaker 1: men he could and stand guard in front of the

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Speaker 1: Hyatt Hotel, looking tough to scare away the gangs of

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Speaker 1: armed looters that the chief was convinced were on their way.

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Speaker 1: So Fred Johnson rounded up as many tough looking guys

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Speaker 1: as he could, and they spent the day guarding the

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Speaker 1: Hyatt Hotel, a military response to a humanitarian disaster. The

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Speaker 1: huge mob of armed, rampaging looters never did show up,

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Speaker 1: nor is it clear that that mob ever existed. It

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Speaker 1: was just one of the terrifying and usually false rumors

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Speaker 1: about New Orleans. Why were there so many rumors? Racism

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Speaker 1: must have played a role. About two thirds of the

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Speaker 1: city's residents were black. That will only have sharp and

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Speaker 1: our tendency to think badly of each other. Anyway, because

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Speaker 1: the rest of the country was too scared to go

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Speaker 1: and help. The Red Cross, for example, waited a month

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Speaker 1: before entering the city, a month they thought it was

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Speaker 1: just too dangerous. The media favored dramatic stories, but those

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Speaker 1: stories are often about the exceptions. That family who drove

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Speaker 1: from London to the Lake District and back were admittedly

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Speaker 1: pretty dumb, but that family stuck out precisely because in

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Speaker 1: a country of sixty five million people, there were very

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Speaker 1: few people arrogant and selfish enough to pull the stunt.

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Speaker 1: At some points, it seemed that the only people breaking

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Speaker 1: the rules were senior political figures themselves. Most of the

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Speaker 1: rest of us respected them. The government expected far more

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Speaker 1: people to chafe against lockdown rules than actually did. They

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Speaker 1: had forgotten the lesson of the Blitz. Such stories only

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Speaker 1: perpetuate the disaster myths by making bad behavior seem more

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Speaker 1: common than it is. They may even have the counterproductive

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Speaker 1: effect of encouraging more bad behavior. If we are told

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Speaker 1: that others are acting selfishly, we might feel inclined to

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Speaker 1: be selfish too. When Yussrian of the novel Catch twenty

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Speaker 1: two was challenged what if everyone decided to look out

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Speaker 1: only for themselves? His response captured the idea, I'd certainly

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Speaker 1: be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I.

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Speaker 1: Psychologists led by Professor Robert Chaldeini have studied this insight

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Speaker 1: in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. When visitors

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Speaker 1: were told that the forest was being endangered because others

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Speaker 1: were stealing fossilized wood, they stole two. When tourists were

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Speaker 1: told truthfully that the vast majority of visitors were leaving

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Speaker 1: the wood untouched, they did. Likewise, I would not be

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Speaker 1: at all shocked to learn that scolding reports about unnecessary

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Speaker 1: journeys only encourage more unnecessary journeys. Most people aren't villains,

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Speaker 1: and the more exaggerated stories we tell ourselves about wrongdoers,

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Speaker 1: the more wrongdoing they'll be. None of this means that

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Speaker 1: we live up to the heroic tale of E'am's self sacrifice.

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Speaker 1: But then perhaps the villagers of Eam didn't quite live

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Speaker 1: up to that tale either. Many of the stories we'd

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Speaker 1: tell about Eam come from a book by a local historian,

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Speaker 1: William Wood, who was writing in eighteen forty, nearly two

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Speaker 1: centuries after the plague hit. Iam would admitted himself that

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Speaker 1: his account was more local legend than solid history. We

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Speaker 1: know that the village was isolated from the outside world.

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Speaker 1: We know that more than two hundred and fifty villagers died,

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Speaker 1: and we know that Catherine Mompesson, the vicar's wife, was

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Speaker 1: among them. But what we don't know, and indeed what

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Speaker 1: seems more myth than reality, is that the villagers volunteered

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Speaker 1: to isolate themselves. Constables from nearby Sheffield were policing the boundaries.

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Speaker 1: Why were they needed if the idea of the quarantine

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Speaker 1: came from inside the village, and why do William Mompson's

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Speaker 1: letters not mention anything about volunteering for quarantine. What seems

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Speaker 1: more likely is this. There was a terrible public health emergency.

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Speaker 1: The lives of the citizens of Sheffield and Derby and

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Speaker 1: Manchester were all at grave risk, and so the authorities

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Speaker 1: stepped in to require the quarantine, and the villagers courageously

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Speaker 1: accepted the situation. A few broke the rules and made

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Speaker 1: their escape. They've tended to be ignored because they don't

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Speaker 1: fit the heroic narrative. Most decided to tough it out.

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Speaker 1: That is heroic enough, isn't it. On the first of

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Speaker 1: November sixteen sixty six, Abraham Morton died. He was the

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Speaker 1: two hundred and sixtieth villager to die of the plague

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Speaker 1: and eam and the last. The village had been in

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Speaker 1: quarantine for four months and living with a plague for

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Speaker 1: more than a year. The cost had been grievous, but

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Speaker 1: Iam itself had survived, and before long it was thriving

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Speaker 1: once again. From our perspective, the villagers of Iam seem

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Speaker 1: like heroes of a different age. Yet our own age

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Speaker 1: has its share of everyday sacrifice, and perhaps we're not

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Speaker 1: as different from them as we fear. They weren't saints,

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Speaker 1: we aren't contemptible sinners. We're human, and being human should

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Speaker 1: be good enough. This episode drew on reporting in Patrick

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Speaker 1: Wallace's feature on Iam in eighteen forty three magazine, James

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Speaker 1: Meek's description of the Black Death in the London Review

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Speaker 1: of Books, Rutger Bregman's book Humankind, and The Atlantic Magazine's

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Speaker 1: Floodlines podcast. For a full list of our sources, please

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Speaker 1: see the show notes at Tim Harford dot com. This

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tale was written and presented by me Tim Harford,

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Speaker 1: with help from Andrew Wright. The show was produced by

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Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley with support from Marilyn Rust. The music mixing

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Speaker 1: and sound design other work of Pascal Wise. The scripts

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Speaker 1: were edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle,

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Speaker 1: Carlie Milliori, Heather Fane, Maya Kanig, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Bradwell.

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a Pushkin Industry's production