Sir, – Jennifer O'Connell penned an interesting piece about Waterford city ("The city trying to fight back against coronavirus", News, April 14th).
Your readers may be interested to know that this is not the first time in Waterford's long history that it faced a terrible pandemic challenge and survived to prosper again. Waterford City Council is blessed with some of the most extensive municipal records in the country. Some of these are recorded in the Liber Antiquissimus Civitatis Waterfordiae, edited by the late Dr Niall Byrne and released by the Irish Manuscript Commission in 2007 as "The Great Parchment Book of Waterford". The manuscript records: "Also about the 24th day of October there began a plague in this city, whereof there died in all this year ending the 23rd of September 1604, 2,256, of which infection the city is now almost freed (God be thanked) so as there died within the City this week but four, where the same was so hot that there died a month ago weekly, a hundred and sixteen. The infection was dispersed in most parts of the whole kingdom and notwithstanding the same was vehement, yet there was great plenty of all victuals."
I understand most of the dead, which at 2,256 must have been at least a quarter, if not a third of the city population at the time, are buried in a mass grave at the city courthouse in Catherine Street, which was at the time the grounds of the medieval St Catherine’s Abbey.
It is extraordinary that the public service of the day managed to keep accurate records in the face of what must have been a devastating crisis. – Yours, etc,
DES GRIFFIN,
Lower Newtown,
Waterford.