Between Famine and Death: England on the Eve of the Black Death—Evidence from Paleoepidemiology and Manorial Accounts

Between Famine and Death: England on the Eve of the Black Death—Evidence from Paleoepidemiology and Manorial Accounts The fourteenth-century Black Death was one of the most devastating epidemics in human history. Lasting only a few years, it killed an estimated 30 to 50 percent of affected populations. In England, the population fell from approximately 4.8 to 2.6 million between 1348 and 1351. Recent paleodemographic and paleoepidemiological research has shown that despite such tremendously high levels of mortality, the Black Death killed selectively—similar in kind, if not in scale, to normal, nonepidemic causes of mortality— targeting mainly older adults and frail individuals with a history of physiological stress. This evidence of selective mortality during the Black Death raises questions about the factors that might have affected patterns of heterogeneous frailty in the pre-epidemic population of Europe.