public safety, hygiene and disease prevention Heidi Deneweth
Bruges was a densely populated metropolis by medieval standards, numbering 45,000 inhabitants around 1340 within an area of 430 hectares. When Antwerp took over Bruges’s role in international trade and finance in the late fifteenth century, roughly a third of the population emigrated. All the same, Bruges remained one of the largest cities in the Southern Netherlands in the early modern period, with a population that varied between 25,000 and 38,000 inhabitants. That kind of population density inevitably generated problems in terms of safety, hygiene and health. The authorities could not intervene in citizens’ private lives, but when it came to threats to public safety and health, they imposed mandatory measures, or at the very least issued strongly worded advice. Most of these measures already existed in the late Middle Ages and were merely refined and developed in the early modern period.
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security Medieval Bruges comprised a small number of stone buildings along with numerous wooden houses with thatched roofs. Following some major fires, the civic authorities took action in as early as the thirteenth century to improve fire safety. Thatched roofs were banned, but to avoid imposing significant costs on the population, their replacement was only required during renovation or repair work. Wooden houses were gradually replaced with stone ones, although many retained a wooden facade until the seventeenth century. Road safety was not tackled for the first time until around 1500. In a last-ditch attempt to keep the international trading communities in Bruges, they were offered all the facilities they desired, including a guarantee of a more efficient interface between the harbour and market zones. This entailed clearing away obstacles: protruding porches, cellar entrances,
benches, shop signs and shutters were banished from the main thoroughfares. Building materials were transferred from quaysides, streets and squares to closed warehouses. Even loose pigs, horses, carts and carriages were dispatched from the public to the private space.
clean water The main problems in terms of hygiene were the water supply, drainage and refuse management. The early medieval settlement had drawn its drinking water from the Reie, which was also able to cope at that time with the limited amount of organic waste deposited in it, which it broke down naturally and carried out to sea. By the thirteenth century, however, industrial and residential activities had reached such a scale in the city that the discharge of sewage water and other waste meant the river water was no longer
