Plague doctor costume ‘terrifying’
U.K. police hunt for town stalker
A person dressed as a 17th-century plague doctor has been alarming residents in one U.K. town, by stalking around his local neighbourhood complete with haunting black cloak and beaked mask.
In images posted online by Jade Gosbell, 21, and first reported by the Press Association, the person can be seen crossing a recreational area, dressed in the full garb of the famous doctors whose outfits became a symbol of death.
The sightings of the person in Hellesdon, a suburb of Norwich, have led police in the area to seek the walker out. They want to give the person some choice “words of advice,” they say.
Residents have taken to a local Facebook page to express fears that their kids would be frightened by the person’s appearance.
One person posted, the BBC reports: “Scared the life out of my missus. Terrifying for kids.”
“Just casually … strolling around the village in a plague costume? That’s just not normal is it, do it indoors it’s bloody terrifying for poor little kids,” another wrote.
Gosbell told the Press Association of her recent sighting:
“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.”
In the 17th century, some doctors became famous for treating bubonic plague sufferers of all social statuses while dressed in the cloak, hat and beaked mask. They even carried a small stick to ward off their would-be infectors, should they get too close. Clearly not one to cut corners on detail, the costumed person in Norwich, too, carries such a prodder.
National Geographic reports that the costumes are credited to the physician Charles de Lorme, a 17th-century doctor to royalty and well-to-do patrons that included King Louis XIII.
De Lorme wrote of the costumes — which included scents held within the nose cone to counteract the terrible smells associated with the plague — that it had a “nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and to carry along with the air one
SCARED THE LIFE OUT OF MY MISSUS. TERRIFYING
FOR KIDS.
breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak.”
Much of this historical detail, though, is likely to be lost on the residents of Hellesdon, who will simply see a menacing, black-clad figure approaching across the fields.
Gosbell told the Press Association: “I was sitting there and I was getting angry myself as my mum has a phobia of masks.
“I know that even in daylight if she was to go round the corner and bump into him she would be so scared.
“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.”