18 Pest

1636
To that I have seen the plague
The plague value through Gemert. Even the status and charisma of the Teutonic Order did not stop this enemy. Skinny Hein had overtime ...
'Last year first Lijske Jegers died of the plague, and the day after that Lijske ôk's man ôk nog. Truijcke, ´the only child, was the heiress, but she died about three days later.
'Oy, oy, and then the plague is gone and then the quarrel follows!'
'Yes, just now. Because who inherits?'
In a letter to the aldermen, Jacob Dircx, living at Grootel under Bakel, informed them in January 1637 that he was the grandfather of the late Truijtghen, the daughter of Jan Anthonis Jegers, fathered by the latter to Lijske, Jacob's daughter.
When the three members of the family died of plague within days of each other, the goods ended up with Neeske, a sister of the said Jan Anthonis Jegers. But surely he, Jacob, as a grandfather, was the first claimant!? He therefore wanted the aldermen to force Neeske to give the goods to him.

Well, that terrible, haunting disease. The Black Death. The contagious infectious disease plagued Gemert, and some sources boasted of over three thousand deaths. Few dared to stay in Gemert. So Engel, the widow of Cornelis Verhoeven, took flight with her family to St Anthonis across the Peel to a distant relative. This Jan Willem Janssen took in Engel and her family out of pity, also because of the death of her husband. But so the plague also entered his home, made the house unclean and caused great pericuul and misery. Engel then declared of his own accord to the aldermen of St Anthonis:
'Because we have made Jan's house so unclean with the whole family, so is my utmost will, if I come to die with my children, that Jan and his wife get 400 guilders from my estate.'

Also typical of the plague plague was that the dispatched made their preparations in advance: all outstanding bills were paid, hasty wills were written down, distant relatives indicated, illegitimate children still quickly recognised, the cattle chased into the open grasslands, coffins ordered in advance. Admirable!
Yet that typical human trait also proudly remained: quarrelling. Quarrelling over who were now the heirs of the people and families who had succumbed to the plague. Quarrelling over how and on whom debts of the deceased should be recovered. Quarrelling over scrubbers' wages that had not been paid. Quarrelling over furniture that was put out by the scrubbers for so long and then stolen. Scrubbers? These were the people who realised that for some reason they were immune to the disease and volunteered to enter plague houses, assist the sick and clean the house afterwards. For high fees, of course. But who had to pay them? Those directly affected were usually dead ...

And then there was always the scum who took advantage of the situation. On Sunday 28 October 1636, at seven in the evening, it was already dark, one Jantje van Gennep arrived at the house of Laurens Cox's widow, diagonally opposite the church, in the company of three men. That was someone who allowed himself to be called "the Sergeant", and the two Adriaens brothers. They wanted to go inside.
'With dirty and unkempt words - shame prevents repeating those words - they banged on the doors and windows. Mind you, it was at a time when out of every ten people there was hardly one at home, due to disease and flight which made the village desolate. So I was alone with my two daughters and their young brother.  The men stood on each other's shoulders to see if they could get in that way. They broke down a fence to use it to force the door and they tried to break the lock with a gun. When all that failed, the men smashed the windows, 16 in number. But then again, those windows are high up, the men could not find a staircase and they could not manage to enter the house that way either. All that noise caused assistance to arrive from the village anyway. Unfortunately, as the people are now few, that assistance consisted of only two men. One of them, thank God, managed to alert the bailiff. The latter came, along with the forester, and with the help of the other two they were then able to arrest Jantje van Gennep. The other robbers fired twice at the bailiff with their rifles, but the fire did not burn through, otherwise the bailiff would have been killed. The prisoner still managed to hit my daughter so hard with his fist in the face that it is feared she has lost her sight for good.'