As early as the 14th century Diegem had a Holy Ghost table or poor table, which spent part of the church's revenue on the poor. Its inventories of around 1350 and 1424 are among the oldest preserved in Brabant. Two poor masters were appointed each year around Candlemas by the parish priest, the aldermen and the churchwardens, and often by the lord as well. One of the two offering boxes in the church was for the poor. In 1683 the table brought in about 400 guilders a year from fields, meadows, houses and quit-rents.
The accounts show how practical this help was: shoes, shirts, stockings, breeches and a doublet, a year's board and lodging for a child, peat or money for bread for the sick. In 1787 the table spent, among other things, 100 guilders on clothing, 35 on doctor and medicines, 105 on caring for the sick, 100 on fuel and 68 on rent for poor widows. It also looked after foster children: in 1738 sexton Van Esdeuren had to teach little Joanna Van Gindertaelen to read, sew and darn, on pain of the child being taken away if she was not kept clean. Under the French Republic the table was replaced by a Bureau de Bienfaisance, later the Public Assistance Commission (1925) and since 1977 the OCMW.
The sick house
With so many pilgrims seeking healing, there was also care for the sick. In 1632 a ‘Sieckhuys van Dieghem’ (sick house) is mentioned, on the road to Kraainem, where one entered the village from Brussels; later there is no trace of it. When cholera struck in 1866, Jan Dehase made his farm, the Poteyen Hof, available free of charge for nursing the sick.
The plague of 1635-1637
Parish priest Augustinus Beelden began the registers of deaths and marriages in 1625. They show how the plague was already claiming victims in 1626 and 1629, among them the lady of the castle, Catharina Oudart, who died after a few hours of fever while her servants were too frightened to approach the room. From October 1635 to June 1637 the disease raged: whole families died, sexton Jeroom Bogaerts and his wife on the same day, and the joiner who made the coffins, together with his children. In all there were 139 deaths, almost half the parish. Beelden went from house to house and died, exhausted, in 1639. Later Diegem was struck by cholera (1832, 1849, 1866) and typhus (1839).