Abstract
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the material remains of epidemics that affected two parishes in the centre of Poland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The paper will present the preliminary results of research in archives (metrical books) compared with both the accounts of descendants of families who died as a result of the epidemics and prospecting with non-invasive methods (LIDAR).
Highlights
Epidemics have been a permanent feature of human history from the earliest times to the present day
The titular problem will be presented on the basis of research conducted in two neighbouring Roman Catholic parishes in central Poland – Mierzyn and Rozprza, in the Piotrków Trybunalski District
We know that they were erected during the cholera epidemic, but the parish archive does not record when exactly this took place
Summary
Epidemics have been a permanent feature of human history from the earliest times to the present day. The memory of epidemic cemeteries (called ‘cholera cemeteries’ since the 19th century), unless they are marked by some material form of commemoration, is quickly erased This is usually facilitated by their peripheral location in relation to the buildings of the time, among fields and forests, ‘under statues’ At the beginning of the 18th century, a plague pandemic reached the Commonwealth during this war; it was accompanied by typhoid fever, smallpox, spotted typhus, and dysentery, Danowska 2017, 26
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