It's Not a Womble

It's the Plague Doctor.
Me & Mrs MD today visited the Peak District and the Derbyshire Dales and specifically the 'Plague Village" of Eyam.  
The village museum has a lot of information as to how the plague arrived - in some cloth sent from London during the Great Plague to a local tailor who made garments for the villagers.
When villagers started to die from the disease the local rector persuaded them to quarantine themselves so as not to infect other villages.  260 local lives were lost in a 14 month period.
The Plague Doctor moved around the town in this very bizarre outfit. At the time of the plague (1665), nothing was known about microbes or viruses. Rather, it was believed that disease was carried by evil spirits or "bad air".The mask served, on the one hand, to physically prevent the spirits from entering the physician's body and, on the other, to frighten them and drive those spirits away. It was filled with sweet smelling herbs and flowers that were thought to prevent infection.
The local church has a rather good stained glass window that documents the disaster - I have put that as my extra.