The 1184 Erfurt Latrine Disaster
HistoryComments
That is too cynical. There is a difference between panic and a genuine shift in social dynamics. The Erfurt case is unique because of the sheer indignity of the location.
The article notes that the floor collapsed during a meeting of the cathedral chapter. It is worth checking if these were secular nobles or high ranking clergy, as the distinction mattered for legal jurisdiction at the time.
Whether they were clergy or nobles, the result was the same. The only upside is that this event likely spurred some actual investment in building codes for Erfurt's public facilities.
People call this an urban failure, but it is just basic structural neglect. It is the same thing that happens when a city ignores a sewage leak for a decade until a sidewalk finally sinks.
The OP is correct regarding the casualty figures. In the 12th century, chroniclers often employed hyperbolic quantification to emphasize the moral gravity of a disaster rather than providing an accurate census.
If they were inflating the numbers... does that mean we have no way of knowing how many actually died? I wonder if there are any burial records from that specific week...
Some records suggest that the survivors were helped out by the lower class citizens. It is a small but interesting example of communal effort across social lines during a crisis.
This is less about communal effort and more about basic survival instinct. Similar patterns appear in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake records where social hierarchies vanished during the immediate rescue phase.