Police hunt for prankster dresses in plague costume for daily walks

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Police hunt prankster caught strolling around suburb dressed as 17th century plague doctor with long black cloak, hat and beaked mask

  • A prankster in Norwich goes for walks dressed as a 17th century plague doctor
  • Members of the community are worried the beaked costume will scare children 
  • Norfolk Police are keen to identify him to ‘provide him some words of advice’ 
  • Do you know who the prankster is? Let us know: [email protected] 
  • Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

By Jordan King For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

Police are looking for someone who has been going for their daily walks while dressed as a 17th century plague doctor during the coronavirus lockdown. 

People in Norwich have spotted the person wearing a long black cloak, hat and pointed beak-like mask.  

Many people in the community are worried the outfit will frighten children and have reported the plague doctor to the police.  

During the plague in the 17th century European doctors would wear the outfit when they tended to patients because they believed the outfits could purify poisonous air

A prankster in Norwich dresses up as a 17th century plague doctor on their daily walks during the coronavirus lockdown

Plague doctors thought beaked masks containing lavender would protect them 

During the plague doctors dressed in certain clothes they believed protected them from the airborne diseases.  

They wore long, ankle-length overcoats and bird-like beak filled with plants and herbs that had a smell, usually lavender. 

They also wore gloves, boots and wide hat. 

Historians think  the outfit was invented in 1619 by Charles de Lorme who got the idea for head-to-toe clothing from a soldier’s armour. 

Jade Gosbell, who saw the walker, said: ‘It was like 20 degrees, he was wearing a full black suit, it just looked ridiculous.’ 

‘It’s clearly for attention or something like that, because normal people just wouldn’t do that.’

Jade said she was worried her mum, who has a phobia of masks, would bump into the person in costume. 

‘Kids would be frightened, my mum would be frightened, however some people really don’t think it’s that deep, they just think that he’s having a laugh, he’s just trying to find something to do with himself during isolation and lockdown,’ she said. 

Norfolk Police said that they were aware of the individual and that they would like to identify them to ‘provide words of advice about the implications of his actions’. 

During the plague in the 17th century European doctors would wear the outfit when they tended to patients because they believed the outfits could purify poisonous air.

 Do you know who the prankster is? Let us know: [email protected]

WHAT CAUSED EUROPE’S BUBONIC PLAGUES?

The plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was the cause of some of the world’s deadliest pandemics, including the Justinian Plague, the Black Death, and the major epidemics that swept through China in the late 1800s. 

The disease continues to affect populations around the world today. 

The Black Death of 1348 famously killed half of the people in London within 18 months, with bodies piled five-deep in mass graves.

When the Great Plague of 1665 hit, a fifth of people in London died, with victims shut in their homes and a red cross painted on the door with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’.

The pandemic spread from Europe through the 14th and 19th centuries – thought to come from fleas which fed on infected rats before biting humans and passing the bacteria to them.

But modern experts challenge the dominant view that rats caused the incurable disease.

Experts point out that rats were not that common in northern Europe, which was hit equally hard by plague as the rest of Europe, and that the plague spread faster than humans might have been exposed to their fleas. 

Most people would have had their own fleas and lice, when the plague arrived in Europe in 1346, because they bathed much less often.