This Side of the Pond

The concept of personal sacrifice isn’t exactly foreign to these parts. You need only look south to Fish Mountain to be reminded the strong streak of courage that runs through our community.

I came across a story from my homeland last week that, on the face of it, is really quite sad. However, its centuries-spanning impact is a testament to the importance of doing the right thing, even when you can’t be sure what impact your actions are going to have – or who exactly will be impacted.

Our story takes place in Eyam, a tiny village located in the Peak District, in the center of the north of England. It’s a timeless village that doesn’t look much different today to how it appeared back in 1665, when the last wave of the Great Plague was sweeping through London.

In case you aren’t aware of that horrifying event, it was a devastating epidemic of bubonic plague that is thought to have wiped out almost half of Europe’s population. It was caused by black fleas carried through the streets on black rats, although that was not something the medical community yet understood, all the way back in the seventeenth century.

More than 100,000 people in London died over the next year – a fifth of the population of England’s capital city. Infection was rampant, survival odds were low and the rich were fleeing the city in droves, but the plague was still largely contained mainly to the southeast of the country.

That was, until it reached the little village of Eyam, a few miles from the northern city of Sheffield.

In August, 1665, the village tailor received a bundle of fabrics from the capital city. As it turned out, the fabric was infested with fleas.

A week later, his assistant died. Soon after, the tailor died, and so did the rest of his household.

Then the neighbors began to fall sick. The plague, it seemed, had escaped the big city.

A new vicar had recently come to the village, and he was the first to realize what needed to be done to prevent the plague from spreading further into the north. However, he was not a popular man among his parishioners.

Unsure whether he’d been able to convince them himself, William Mompesson called upon the help of his predecessor, Thomas Stanley. Together, they called a meeting of the entire village and asked everyone to voluntarily quarantine themselves within Eyam.

Surprisingly, virtually everyone agreed.

They built an exclusion zone known as a “cordon sanitaire”, made of large, flat stones, at the borders of the village. Eyam was not self-sufficient, but a plan was devised whereby deliveries of food from neighboring villages were left by those stones, and payment was left in exchange in bowls of vinegar, which was believed to cleanse them of the plague. The Earl of Devonshire also helped out by agreeing to send food and supplies as long as the villagers stayed quarantined.

For over a year, the quarantine held. It seems there were almost no attempts to cross the line, even when the plague was at its worst.

The village paid a heavy toll for its bravery. By November, 1666, three quarters of the villagers had died, leaving an estimated 83 survivors. By all accounts, more than 70 families were entirely wiped out.

Stories remain of the tragedy that held the village in its grasp for those 14 months, including the woman who lost six of her children and her husband within eight days. People from the nearby village of Stoney Middleton are said to have stood on the hill nearby in solidarity as she buried them.

The most famous is told in the Plague Window, a beautiful stained glass window in the village church. A pair of lovers are separated by a stream, one on the inside of the exclusion zone and one on the outside.

Emmot Syddall and Rowland Torre met at the stream once each week, shouting at each other across the water, but unable to move closer or touch. They kept this up throughout the quarantine, until one day, she did not come.

The story of Eyam may be tragic, but the actions of those brave souls kept the plague from spreading its tendrils into the north. But their impact doesn’t stop there – not even close. You see, not enough of them died.

I’m aware that’s a strange thing to say, but the Black Death was not something many people survived. Geneticist Dr. Stephen O’Brien had a suspicion that a particular gene mutation called “delta 32” might be the reason some people are immune to diseases like the plague. It was already known that this mutation provided protection from HIV.

O’Brien hypothesized that it might prevent the plague from being able to enter a host’s white blood cells, and Eyam was the perfect place to test this theory because so many descendants of those villagers still live there. Sure enough, he found delta 32 in 14% of the samples taken – a statistically significant percentage, if you consider how much the gene pool would have been diluted in all that time.

His discovery led to several important steps forward in treatment for HIV-AIDS, including the first cure in a patient who was infused with donor stem cells in 2006.

Back in 1665, those villagers had no idea what HIV was. They didn’t even know the people of the north whose lives they were hoping to save, but they still made that unimaginably difficult choice.

Centuries later, this tiny community is still protecting its neighbors, though these days those neighbors are spread all across the world. Who knows…if you have British roots in your family, it might just be that you, too, are here today thanks to the sacrifice made by the villagers of Eyam.