Ever heard of the searchers? They killed Romeo and Juliet. Confused? Read on….
The watchers appeared during the 17th century plague outbreaks in London, standing guard at the homes of the sick so that the sick didn’t leave and kept the population as a whole (except for the wealthy) from leaving London, but before and after the watchers were the searchers. They were first appointed during the plague outbreaks of 1568. According to Dr. Richelle Munkhoff, whose work on searchers has been widely published, “Searchers were always women on poor relief … they were widows, but you could be widowed at 20. They weren’t usually elderly, so if someone got the job they kept it for 30 years or more.” Call it job security — and it not just anybody landed this job. “It was some- body who was respected,” said Dr. Munkhoff. “It wasn’t given to someone who didn’t have any standing. In general, a poor but respectable member of the parish. On the dole but with enough skills to do the job. They weren’t reviled until a plague.”
Searchers worked in pairs regardless of whether or not a plague was occurring, often to find out if plague was on the horizon. “How do you know when a hotspot is going to happen if you’re not looking at all times?” asked Dr. Munkhoff. “So when they first start it’s ‘plague or not plague,’ but by Shakespeare’s time the government wanted all causes of death. It was all for economics. There was a constant threat of bubonic plague, they had minor ones every other or every fifth year.” Women often kept the job within their family across generations, such as mother to daughter or mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, almost like an apprenticeship or family knowledge that was passed down.
With the stroke of a pen, the searchers could condemn a household to a 40-day quarantine. Therefore, according to none other than John Graunt —of whom a fair share of his fame was based on the data the searchers gathered—dis- missed them as unreliable and at the mercy of “a cup of ale, and the bribe of a two-groat [coin] fee.” This beer-fueled, two-groat bribe was meant to persuade searchers to call a sick house clean and therefore free of quarantine. Whether they were actually bribed is up for debate, though Dr. Munkhoff asserts, “There was so much riding on that decision that I’m sure there were cases. Not so simple as the searchers are corrupt. These people are your neighbors and you might have a positive relationship with them....”
Physician Nathaniel Hodges asserted that they were “wretches [who] out of greediness to plunder the dead, would strangle their patients and charge it to distemper in their throats.” This reputation followed them like miasma. They were also accused of “secretly convey[ing] the pestilent taint from sores of the infected to those who were well.”
Though it can’t be proven, it certainly seems like William Shakespeare took a dim view of searchers as well. Toward the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is given a potion by Friar Laurence which will make it appear as though she died so that she would be put in the family crypt. The friar promises to send another friar to tell Romeo of the plan so that he can be with her in the crypt when she wakes up, and then they’ll both live happily ever after. Unfortunately for the “star-cross’d lovers,” this is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
ACT V SCENE II — Friar Laurence’s cell.
[Enter FRIAR JOHN]
FRIAR JOHN: Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!
[Enter FRIAR LAURENCE]
FRIAR LAURENCE: This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo? Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
FRIAR JOHN: Going to find a bare-foot brother out
One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth; So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.
FRIAR LAURENCE: Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?
FRIAR JOHN: I could not send it, — here it is again, — Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection.
FRIAR LAURENCE: Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood,
The letter was not nice but full of charge Of dear import, and the neglecting it
May do much danger. Friar John, go hence; Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight Unto my cell.
So, what happened? “The searchers of the town / Suspecting that we were both in a house / Where the infection pestilence did reign / Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth / So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.” You’d be forgiven for missing the entire story here given that the searchers, unlike Macbeth’s witches, didn’t even get any stage time, and
even if they had, hardly anyone today would have known the context. (Truth be told, Italy, where Romeo and Juliet took place, never had searchers. They were only in England and parts of Scotland.)
Friar John was never able to deliver the message that Juliet was alive be- cause searchers thought he’d been in a house with the plague and they prevented him from leaving, so his letter did not reach Romeo. Had they let him go on his way, the lovers would not have wound up both dying. (In director Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film version, Romeo + Juliet, the note gets held up by FedEx.)
Stop Searching
Much of these opinions on the searchers are due to a) misogyny: a woman dictating how a man must behave, and b) socioeconomic status. What right does a widow on the dole have to tell me what to do? So, similar to Father Henry Morse, the searchers faced persecution while being an essential worker during the grimmest and most morbid of times, and it was recorded that chil- dren of the searchers died of the plague, so they always risked bringing the pes- tilence home to their families.
“If they thought someone was sick or had died, the only kind of control they had was to shut up the house,” said Dr. Munkhoff. “They got the constable to come, lock the doors with everyone in there, and the family wasn’t able to come out for 28–40 days.
“If anyone got sick during that time the house remained closed until you’re all dead or you’re all better. People had to hand food through the window. It was a huge interference for the household. So here are these two poor women in your neighborhood suddenly deciding your fate. A lot of urban legends started, like searchers declared a woman dead who then began to breathe [in, a way, similar to Romeo and Juliet] and they became like witches.”
As the earliest medical examiners, searchers examined corpses to find the cause of deaths. They were given a list of symptoms to check for, like swelling around the neck, pustules, and blotches. Their responsibilities were later divided into three essential functions: those who determined whether or not a sickness was associated with the plague; those who cared for the general sick; and those who viewed corpses in an attempt to link deaths to specific diseases. They identified themselves by carrying a red wand.
Their written documents containing statistical data linking sickness to fatality were then recorded in the Bills of Mortality. The searchers’ records have enabled historians and researchers to estimate the living conditions and the influence of diseases like the plague on a given population at a time when homes were not required to provide this information to the parish registrars. The searchers’ work continued until the Registration Act of 1836, which first required all marriages in England and Wales, then all births and deaths, to be well documented — an act that began the modern era of vital statistics in England and Wales.
Republished from Plagues, Pandemics, and Viruses: From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19 by Heather Quinlan from Visible Ink Press.
