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Gosbell told the Press Association of her recent sighting:

“It was like 20 degrees, he was wearing a full black suit, it just looked ridiculous. It’s clearly for attention or something like that, because normal people just wouldn’t do that.”

In the 17th century, some doctors became famous for treating bubonic plague victims of all social status while dressed in the cloak, hat and beaked mask. They even carried a small stick to ward off their would-be infectors, should they get too close. Clearly not one to cut corners on detail, the costumed person in Norwich, too, carries such a prodder.

National Geographic reports that the costumes are credited to the physician Charles de Lorme, a 17th century doctor to royalty and well-to-do patrons that included King Louis XIII.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons

De Lorme wrote of the costumes — which included scents held within the nose cone to counteract the terrible smells associated with the plague — that it had a “nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and to carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak.”

Much of this historical detail, though, is likely to be lost on the residents of Hellesdon, who will simply see a menacing, black-clad figure approaching across the fields. Gosbell told the Press Association:

“I was sitting there and I was getting angry myself as my mum has a phobia of masks.

“I know that even in daylight if she was to go round the corner and bump into him she would be so scared.

“Kids would be frightened, my mum would be frightened, however some people really don’t think it’s that deep, they just think that he’s having a laugh, he’s just trying to find something to do with himself during isolation and lockdown.”