SCEMS | EMDG | Eleanor Kerfoot, University of Oxford

Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies

‘Stench’: corpse disposal and epidemic fever in late-eighteenth century Southwark

<p>This work-in-progress paper explores lay responses to rotting corpses in early modern England through a detailed case study of St Saviour’s parish vestry minutes, Southwark, 1793-4. It argues that there existed an intellectual and cultural association between corpse putrefaction and epidemic ‘fever’, a fatal disease likened to plague and commonly described as the major threat to public health in eighteenth-century Britain. This argument challenges an existing body of historiography asserting that ‘hygiene concerns’ did not significantly influence popular disposal practices until the Victorian era, when ‘Burial Reform’ legislation ‘redefined’ the corpse as a source of contagion. Rather, community-driven regulation initiatives identifiable at Southwark would suggest that the ‘everyday’ stench of rotting corpses had long been perceived as intensely dangerous in the popular imagination, with significant implications for the historiography of early modern sanitation and attitudes towards the dead.</p>

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SCEMS | EMDG | Eleanor Kerfoot, University of Oxford

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SCEMS | EMDG | Eleanor Kerfoot, University of Oxford

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