Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire

12/05/2024

RSLC volume 159 - The Jacobite Prisoners of the Fifteen, edited by Jonathan Oates - is now available! This volume provides important new information about the fate of those participants of the Jacobite uprising of 1715 who were taken prisoner after the battle of Preston, and about the make-up of the Jacobite army. It also contains two little-known contemporary Jacobite accounts of the campaign, which shed fresh light on the battle of Preston, and various legal depositions and letters relating to the prisoners.

This volume can be purchased for £35 + p&p: please email Dr Fiona Pogson ([email protected]) to make your order. If you'd like to consider joining the Society, and receiving our annual volumes for a yearly subscription of £20, please see our website www.rslc.org.uk for information

03/05/2024

The latest RSLC volume has arrived.

31/03/2024

Here is an extract from a letter written by Ada McGuire while on holiday on the Isle of Man on 23 July 1916:

"The news from the front continues good but the price to pay is high. Poor Ralph Merry has been killed (did I tell you). Also Mr and Mrs Lees only son. It makes me very anxious. They are waiting for me to go out so I will say goodbye. My teachers gave me a lovely silver tray for my dressing table when I left.
Dearest love
from Ada"

Ralph Merry was one of two brothers from the Merry Family of 63 Manor Road, Liscard. He died whilst fighting with the Liverpool Pals on 1 July 1916, aged 22 (not 20, as Ada claimed). The McGuires had lived on Manor Road, but by this time were living on Cliff Road Wallasey. Ralph's older Brother, Alfred Frithjof Merry (his middle name was Norwegian and came from his mother's family), fought with 6/King's (Liverpool Regiment) and was awarded the Military Cross three times, which, as anyone who knows how hard it was to win that medal will know, is an astonishing achievement. There were hundreds and thousands of such incredibly brave young men from Merseyside during the Great War and, contrary to popular myths, the officers were highly dedicated and led from the front, hence their high casualty rates. This is one of the many insights to be had from the McGuire Family's wartime letters which I am editing for the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.

31/03/2024

I am editing a volume for the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire - letters written by the McGuire Family of Wallasey during the Great War. Here is an extract from a letter written by Rhoda McGuire on 7 February 1916:

'Bess was telling us about a funny little girl she knows. This child is quite a caution – dances to the flowers in the garden, then makes them a bow and says “You liked it, flowers, didn’t you?” Not long ago her father lost a cheque and had the whole household searching for it. I suppose he was making a nice shindy about it – anyway they heard the child in her room praying that it might be found. It was found just as the little girl was coming downstairs. The father called out the news. They heard the child say “Oh! it is all right God. He’s found it.”'

The collection contains many little stories like this, as well as reflections on the war, its effects on local people and descriptions of the many local families who lost loved ones.

25/03/2024

There's still time to register for our public lecture on Wednesday (27 March): Martin Heale, 'Robin Hood in the Medieval and Early Modern North West', starting at 2pm, in Liverpool Central Library (Meeting Rooms 1-2).

ALL ARE WELCOME! The lecture will also be livestreamed via Zoom, for those who wish to join us online. To register, please contact Diana Dunn ([email protected]) in advance of the meeting, confirming whether you would like to attend in person or online.
Please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested!

27/02/2024

The following events, organised by our friends at the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, may be of interest.

Guest lecture (on-line) 21 February 2024
Dr Caroline Pudney, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Chester
‘In Search of Roman Rural Settlement’

The lecture was recorded and will soon be available via a link on the Historic Society’s website: hslc.org.uk

Lecture (on-line for non-members) Liverpool Atheneum, 20 March 2024.
Depending on the length of the AGM the lecture should start around 3pm.
Dr Paul Salveson, Visiting Professor, Universities of Bolton and Huddersfield
‘Lancastrians: Mills, Mines and Minarets: A landmark new history’

We will post a Zoom link for this lecture when it’s available

Mike Stammers Memorial Lecture – in person event - Maritime Museum, Royal
Albert Dock, Liverpool, 1 May 2024, 5.30pm
Tony Tibbles, author and Emeritus Keeper of Slavery History at National Museums, Liverpool
‘Liverpool’s Ship Portrait Artists’

15/02/2024

RSLC Public Lecture - all welcome!

At 2pm on Wednesday 27 March, in Liverpool Central Library (Meeting Rooms 1-2), we'll be holding our annual Colin Phillips Memorial Lecture. Professor Martin Heale will be speaking on 'Robin Hood in the Medieval and Early Modern North West'.

Martin Heale is Professor of Late Medieval and Reformation History at the University of Liverpool, and President of the Society. He has published widely on church and society in late medieval and sixteenth-century England. His recent work includes a chapter on piety and anticlericalism in the medieval Robin Hood stories, to be published later this year in a volume entitled _Historians on Robin Hood_, edited by Stephen H. Rigby.

ALL ARE WELCOME! The lecture will also be livestreamed via Zoom, for those who wish to join us online. To register, please contact Diana Dunn ([email protected]) in advance of the meeting, confirming whether you would like to attend in person or online.

Please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested!

13/03/2023

RSLC Public Lecture - all welcome!

At 2pm on Wednesday 5 April, in the Liverpool Central Library (Meeting Rooms 1-2), we'll be holding our annual Colin Phillips Memorial Lecture. Dr Stephen Roberts will be speaking on “Welfare, Riot and Bereavement: The Great War through the Eyes of the McGuire Family of Wallasey, 1914-1919”.

Stephen Roberts has written books and articles about the history of Wirral, the North-West of England and about the Great War. He recently completed a PhD on Wirral in the Great War, and is engaged in editing the letters of the McGuire family of Wallasey for RSLC.

ALL ARE WELCOME! We will be livestreaming the talk via Zoom, if you would like to join us online. To register for this event, please contact Diana Dunn ([email protected]), providing your email address and confirming whether you would like to attend in person or online. The lecture directly follows our Annual General Meeting (1.45pm-2pm).

Please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested!

23/01/2023

If you'd like to hear about our recent and upcoming activities, the latest RSLC newsletter is now available on our website: www.rslc.org.uk The newsletter includes an interview with Dr Jonathan Oates, whetting our appetite for his upcoming RSLC volume, "Prisoners of the Fifteen". There's also a fascinating piece by Dr Simon Harris about the Legh of Adlington archive, recently acquired by Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

Please share with anyone you think would be interested!

14/07/2022

We’re delighted to announce the publication of our latest volume (RSLC 158): Loyalty and Levy. West Derby Hundred in Lancashire seen in the Succession Act Oath Roll of 1534 and the Lay Subsidy Returns of 1545, edited by Thomas Steel.

This edition contains two fascinating documents relating to the hundred of West Derby (which covered south-west Lancashire, including Liverpool, Warrington, Wigan and Ormskirk) in the reign of Henry VIII. The Succession Act of 1534 required every adult male in the kingdom to swear an oath acknowledging the legitimacy of the king’s recent marriage to Anne Boleyn (and any offspring it produced): and the recently-discovered roll for West Derby is apparently the only one to survive for the entire country! It is here edited alongside the 1545 lay subsidy record for West Derby, which provides details of every taxpayer in the hundred.

Together, these two records cast much new light on south-west Lancashire in the reign of Henry VIII. The edition also contains detailed introductions to both documents, and a topographical survey which draws together information about every parish and township in West Derby hundred in the mid-Tudor period.

For further information about this new volume, see: http://rslc.org.uk/blog/. A hardback copy (432 pages) can be purchased via our website for £35 + p&p: http://rslc.org.uk/purchase-a-publication/

Members of the Society receive the volume as part of their £20 annual subscription (£25 for overseas members). For details of how to join the society, and the benefits of doing so, see http://rslc.org.uk/membership/

07/04/2022

Colin Phillips Memorial Lecture, 13 April

We're really looking forward to hosting our first in-person public lecture since 2019 next week. If you're free, why not join us for Dr Alan Crosby's talk on 'Lancashire's Second Oldest Ghost Story', which offers a fascinating insight into Tudor culture and belief.

The talk will begin at around 2pm (directly after our short AGM) on Wednesday 13 April. You can attend either in person - in Lecture Theatre 1 of the Rendall Building, Bedford St South, University of Liverpool - or follow the livestreamed talk on Zoom. For the Zoom link, please contact our Membership Secretary, Diana Dunn, by emailing [email protected]

Everyone is welcome!

Directions and campus maps.

18/03/2022

RSLC Annual General Meeting and Public Lecture

We are pleased to confirm that the Record Society’s Annual General Meeting and Public Lecture will be held in Lecture Theatre 1 of the Rendall Building, Bedford St South, University of Liverpool on WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 2022, beginning at 1.45pm. For a map of the University of Liverpool campus, see: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/maps/

The AGM is expected to last around 15 minutes, and will be followed at c.2.00pm by the 2nd Colin Phillips Memorial Lecture, to be delivered this year by Dr Alan G. Crosby on ‘Lancashire’s Second Oldest Ghost Story’. This story dates from the reign of Henry VIII, and so links well with the upcoming RSLC volume, 'Loyalty and Levy'.

Dr Alan G. Crosby is one of Britain’s leading local historians, and since 2001 has been editor of 'The Local Historian'. He has published extensively on many aspects of the history of North West England, and his 1991 Record Society volume, 'Benjamin Shaw’s Family Records', has become a standard text in the field of nineteenth-century working class autobiography.

We will be streaming the AGM and public lecture via Zoom, for anyone interested who is unable to attend in person. If you would like to join us online, the Zoom link for the meeting can be obtained from our Membership Secretary, Diana Dunn, by emailing [email protected]

Please feel free to circulate details of this free event to anyone who might be interested. All are welcome!

For more details about the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire and our activities, please see our website: www.rslc.org.uk

09/03/2022

The 2022 RSLC newsletter is now available on the front page of the Society's website: www.rslc.org.uk. This year's edition includes a summary of our recent activities, and details of our AGM and public lecture taking place on Wednesday 13 April (more information to follow). There are also interviews with Thomas Steel, who discusses his upcoming RSLC volume 'Loyalty and Levy', and with RSLC Council member Dr Peter Cotgreave. Finally, Sam Riley writes about his recent research into the 'Ugly Club', a mid eighteenth-century Liverpool drinking club.

Any feedback about our annual newsletter is very welcome!

07/01/2022

Christmas with Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby (1669-1737), part 3

The strangest Christmas entry in Nicholas Blundell’s diurnal records a curious happening on the Christmas Day of 1717. This indicates that ghostly visitations at Christmas were not confined to Charles Dickens’ imagination.

Blundell’s diary entry relates how Ellen Harrison (who acted as a ‘dry nurse’ to the family) ‘was lying in a Slumber between 6 & 7 of the Clock this Morning’ [Christmas Day], when ‘she felt some Body (as she thought) feeling about upon the Bedclothes’. At this, ‘she called out (thinking it was her Bed-fellow Ann Blundell who was gone in the Night to Mr Thomas Wofold to her Devotions) and said, “Nanny are you not almost Starved?”. “Yes”, answered something’.

Ellen then replied “Had it not been better for you to have gone this Christmas day to Confession to Mr Aldred than have gone so far this cold Night to Mr Wofold’s?”. Then ‘something answered with a Sigh and said “I would rather go to him than any Body”.’ Blundell’s entry proceeds: ‘Ellen not hearing her stir in the Room, nor hearing her go out, spoke again but nothing answered – which did something surprise her, knowing that Ann Blundell could not get into the House, the Doors being all Locked or Bolted; so Ellen got up & went down Stairs, found all the Doors fast as she had left them when she went to bed; and Ann Blundell came not Home till near nine of the Clock.’

Blundell then records that ‘This Account Ellen Harrison gave me this Morning who assures me there was no body in our Part of the House except herself and my Wife and I; she says also she took the Voice to be Ann Blundell’s’. He was clearly impressed by the story, since he concludes his entry: ‘What this means, I suppose time will show – for certainly it was something supernatural.’ Alternatively these strange happenings might perhaps be attributed to the after-effects of Nicholas Blundell’s Christmas Eve punch.

For the full text of The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby, 1702-1728, edited by F. Tyrer and J. J. Bagley as RSLC volumes 110, 112 and 114, see: Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (rslc.org.uk)

Image: Illustration by John Leach for "A Christmas Carol"

03/01/2022

Christmas with Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby (1669-1737), Part 2

The Blundell family Christmas did not consist wholly of festivities. A devout Catholic, Nicholas Blundell’s Christmas day generally included a religious dimension. In some years, he records that he passed the afternoon reading ‘a spiritual book’ in his closet. The entry for Christmas Day 1703 specifies his seasonal reading matter. He relates that: ‘I read much in “Quid me persequeris”’: an unpublished book, written by his grandfather William Blundell (the Cavalier), on the penal laws faced by Roman Catholics. In the 1720s, Nicholas often attended two masses on Christmas Day, one at night and the other at 10am in the morning.

From time to time, events caused the Blundells to pass a particularly solemn Christmas. The Yuletide of 1714 was a sad occasion, with the passing of family friend Mrs Molineux on 24 December. On Christmas Day, Blundell and his wife went to the Grange for her funeral, although they did not accompany the body to her final resting place in Sefton on account of needing to receive a visitor.

The Christmas of 1707 was also sombre, with Nicholas spending Christmas Day writing ‘some Letters to my Friends to Acquaint them with the Death of my Mother’. To this entry, he appends ‘Laurance Gilberson sang here very Long’ – intimating that this was an equally trying pastime.

For the full text of The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby, 1702-1728, edited by F. Tyrer and J. J. Bagley as RSLC volumes 110, 112 and 114, see: rslc.org.uk/out-of-print-publications/

Image: Little Crosby Hall. The copyright on this image is owned by Neal Theasby and is licenses for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license

30/12/2021

Christmas with Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby (1669-1737), Part 1

The ‘great diurnal’, or diary, of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby – which runs from 1702 to 1728 – provides details of how this gentleman passed the Christmas season over a quarter of a century. Blundell’s entries frequently relate the festivities that accompanied this time of year. In the early eighteenth century, Christmas entertainments continued well into January – with Blundell still enjoying ‘Christmas fare’ and ‘Christmas cheer’ with local gentry and his tenants up to the middle of January. In many years the Blundells received visitors over Christmas, and they also enjoyed the hospitality of others: for instance, in 1704 they spent time with ‘Cousin’ Robert Scarisbrick of Scarisbrick Hall, where Nicholas played cards with fellow guests. This favoured leisure pursuit of Nicholas Blundell was not always successful. In March 1710, he accounted for 2s.6d. ‘Lost by me at Cards this Christmas’.

Nicholas Blundell’s preparations for Christmas often included a trip to Liverpool, to collect rents due from tenants, have a festive drink at the Woolpack, and do some Christmas shopping. In 1714, Blundell purchased some shoes for his wife and children, arranged for the setting of a stone in his wife’s ring, and purchased some ‘wine and drams’, spices, treacle and sugar, dried fruit, oil, capers and anchovies and 100lbs of beef.

By 1722, Blundell had inaugurated a new Christmas tradition: making punch on Christmas Eve. His recipe that year included ‘very small Birch Wine & very small Lime Juice’. He adds: ‘I Steeped the Pills of three Dozen of small Lemons in two Large Quarts of Brandy and put the Juice of them into one Large Quart of Brandy.’ By 1726, Blundell’s punch had become rather more plentiful and more potent, as he records: ‘I Began to make a Provision of Punch of seven Large Quarts of Brandy’.

For the full text of The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby, 1702-1728, edited by F. Tyrer and J. J. Bagley as RSLC volumes 110, 112 and 114, see: rslc.org.uk/out-of-print-publications/

05/12/2021

The oath roll for the acknowledgement of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn (and their offspring), soon to be published as RSLC 158 (Loyalty and Levy), was to set a pattern for the early modern English state’s intrusion into daily life – in Lancashire and Cheshire, as elsewhere in the country. A later example was linked to the Test Act of 1673, which introduced mechanisms to prevent nonconformists and Roman Catholics from holding public office.

One of the provisions was that “persons who bear any offices or places of trust” under the Crown had to receive the sacrament of communion according to the rites of the Church of England. To prove that he had done so, each communicant had to return a certificate into court, signed by the minister who had officiated, one or more churchwardens of the parish, and two witnesses.

We have made available on the RSLC website an index listing 190 of these ‘sacrament certificates’ for the county of Cheshire, covering the period from July 1716 to April 1724. Men from a wide range of Cheshire parishes are here listed as certified communicants. This includes mayors, clergymen, army, excise, customs and salt officers. Around 40% of the men in this sample are described as knights, gentlemen or esquires, but others were of lower social status.

This sample were chosen for indexing because these certificates date from the years immediately following the 1715 Jacobite rising, a period of particular tension in the north-west. This also ties in with the upcoming 2022 RSLC volume: Prisoners of the Fifteen, which focuses on the prisoners taken at the battle of Preston in 1715.

For the index of the Cheshire sacrament certificates (1716-24) and accompanying introduction, see www.rslc.org.uk/publications

Image: an early eighteenth-century sacrament certificate

16/10/2021

The upcoming Record Society volume, "Loyalty and Levy: West Derby Hundred in Lancashire seen in the Succession Act Roll of 1534 and the Lay Subsidy Returns", is not the first RSLC edition with connections to the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

RSLC 116, "Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas 1523-45" (edited by the noted Tudor historian, Eric Ives), published the surviving documentation for the life and career of this important Cheshire gentleman and courtier. Brereton’s papers survive only because they were confiscated by the Crown after his arrest in May 1536 – when he was accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn.

Brereton was most likely innocent of this charge. Although he was a regular at court, having entered royal service in 1521, he was not very closely connected to Anne Boleyn. The specific charges made in his indictment also contain dubious details. Nevertheless, Brereton was one of five men executed on 17 May 1536 – two days before the queen’s own ex*****on.

Brereton’s papers document his rise to prominence and his activities in the late 1520s and early 1530s as the most powerful royal servant in Cheshire and North Wales. His accounts indicate that he enjoyed an annual income of over £750 a year from Crown sources, and he held a number of important royal offices (including chamberlain of Chester). Brereton’s letters highlight how he used his power – often unscrupulously. He dominated and milked local monasteries, and carried out vendettas against local rivals. It was for this troublesome and unruly behaviour, Ives argues, that he was framed by Thomas Cromwell as a lover of Anne Boleyn.

RSLC, volume 116, Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas 1523-45, edited by E. W. Ives: rslc.org.uk/api/file/Vol_116.pdf

Image: Malpas parish church (taken by Peter Craine. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

11/09/2021

We are delighted that our next volume (RSLC 158) – scheduled to be published around the end of the year – will be Loyalty and Levy: West Derby Hundred in Lancashire seen in the Succession Act Roll of 1534 and the Lay Subsidy Returns of 1545, edited by Thomas Steel.

In early 1533, Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn. This was a controversial union – to put it mildly! – and the king was concerned to secure the loyalty of the realm to himself and to his successors by the new marriage. To this end, Henry and his ministers embarked upon an ambitious and wholly unprecedented undertaking. Every adult male in the kingdom was required to acknowledge the legitimacy of the king’s marriage and its offspring – as established by the Succession Act of March 1534 – by swearing an oath before one of the king’s representatives.

Just one substantive roll recording those who were sworn in this way is today known to survive: that for the western half of the Hundred of West Derby in Lancashire. This recently discovered, and apparently unique, document is here printed alongside the 1545 lay subsidy tax returns for West Derby Hundred. Together, these two records cast much new light on the nature of the community of south-west Lancashire in the reign of Henry VIII. Alongside detailed introductions to both documents, the volume includes a topographical survey examining all the parishes and townships of the Hundred in the context of oath roll and subsidy, and identifying where possible the individuals listed in these records.

We will post details of how to purchase Loyalty and Levy at retail price, on its publication. Members of the Society will receive the volume as part of their £20 annual subscription (£25 for overseas members). For details of how to join the society, see http://rslc.org.uk/membership/

Image: An early 19th century engraving of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, alongside a despairing cleric.
This file comes from Wellcome images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

15/07/2021

Stories about People and the Environment #2

Currently, there is a lot of interest in the idea of re-wilding, which involves reintroducing animals to the British Isles which became extinct due to being persecuted by humans. How would you feel about the reintroduction of wolves to Cheshire? As shown in the following extract from a document dated to 1302-3, wolves used to be common in the Forest of Macclesfield, but the Earl of Chester did not like them because they killed his deer which he wanted to hunt and so traps were set:

“To Master John Burgoillon, farmer of the manor of Macclesfield, for monies paid by him for repairing the enclosure of Macclesfield park broken in many places by the wind storm within the present year: and also in repairing certain defects in the fence (haya) ‘Del Coumbe’ of Macclesfield, namely for the Earl of Chester’s share, as well by the hands of the parker of Macclesfield as of Adam Bryan and Robert De Dounes, foresters on Macclesfield in fee, and for making one machine of three trunks (truncis) for taking wolves coming into the park and destroying the deer many times, as appears by the particulars of the same. … 22s. 8 1/2 d.”

Take note of the interesting occupations relating to the management of the forest, including parker, which is now an English surname.

RSLC Volume 59 Accounts of the Chamberlains and Other Officers of the County of Chester 1301-1360 Edited by R. Stewart-Brown 1910, p. 25.

Image from Wikipedia: By Retron - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2722516

15/07/2021

Stories About People and the Environment #1

Today, the natural world is under threat. Many argue that economies need to become more sustainable, that resources should be renewable and that foodstuffs should be locally sourced. In 17th century Cheshire that was how it was. The following is a valuation of the lands of Eastham Parish in Wirral made for the Dean and Chapter of Chester in 1641. It mentions places which are now heavily urbanised (either side of the M53 in the vicinity of Ellesmere Port), which then were totally rural:

"There also belongeth to the said Deane and Chapter the Advowson or presentacion of the viccaridge of Easthame, in the hundred of Werrell and Countye of Chester. There alsoe belongeth to the same Viccaridge the Tythe of Hay, Wooll, Lambe, Pigg, Goose, Hempe, fflaxe and Gorse, in the Towneshipps of Childer, Thorneton, Over Poole, Netherpoole, and Hootton, And the Tythe of Wooll, Lambe, Pigg, Goose, in the Towneshipps of Great Sutton, Little Sutton and Whittbey. The whole Viccaridge besides the Gleabe wee value to be worth per annum … £20."

Notice the importance of animals whose meat is still enjoyed today and also the value of the raw materials necessary for making fabrics – flax, h**p and wool. Also observe the value of gorse. It grew on the many heathlands in Wirral and was used for fodder, along with the hay. It seems to have been a local, sustainable economy. What do you think were its advantages and disadvantages?

RSLC Volume 1 Lancashire and Cheshire Church Surveys 1649-1655 Edited by Henry Fishwick 1879, p. 256 https://archive.org/details/recordsociety01recouoft/page/256/mode/2up

Below is a detail from Speed's Map of Cheshire 1610 obtained from Wikipedia:

04/07/2021

Pandemic stories no.12

The terrible Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20 may have infected around a third of the world’s population (c. 500 million people) and is thought to have caused the deaths of at least 50 million victims around the world.

Among those affected was the Liberal MP, Richard Durning Holt. His diary entry for 3 November 1918 records that ‘Both [Grace] and Dorothy [his daughters] have recently had attacks of influenza of which there has been a serious epidemic with many deaths, and I have had a mild touch perhaps due to my exertions last week end’.

Around a month later, Holt received the upsetting news that his friend and colleague, Sir Charles Nicholson, had ‘died suddenly after a few hours illness from influenza at the hotel in Doncaster where he was conducting his election as an L.G. [Liberal] candidate.’ Holt adds as a tribute to the Doncaster MP: ‘No one could have failed to love him’.

RSLC, volume 129: The Diary of Richard Durning Holt, edited by David J. Dutton:http://rslc.org.uk/api/file/Vol_129-edited.pdf

Image: Spanish flu hospital. Courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C., United States.
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

09/06/2021

Pandemic stories no. 11

The cholera outbreak of the early 1830s witnessed hostility towards medical practitioners, including disturbances in Manchester in 1832. The Swan Street hospital was the scene of large protests after it began admitting cholera cases, with a police presence considered necessary for the protection of staff.

Mistrust of medical professionals, connected with their study and dissection of bodies, also came to a fore during the cholera epidemic. In early September 1832, relatives of a four-year-old cholera victim opened his coffin, to find a brick in place of his head. This distressing discovery prompted suspicions that he had been killed by medics wanting a body to dissect. A crowd of 3000 people attacked Swan Street hospital, damaging the building and 'freeing' the patients.

The ‘Swan Street riot’ was broken up by soldiers, with 13 arrests. The Manchester Board of Health asked local clergy to preach in support of the cholera hospitals – but these remained sites of unrest throughout the epidemic.

RSLC, volume 145: The Challenge of Cholera: Proceedings of the Manchester Special Board of Health 1831-1833, edited by Alan Kidd and Terry Wyke:http://rslc.org.uk/api/file/Vol_145.pdf

Image: Swan St, Manchester: originally posted (with permission to share) by Rept0n1x

16/05/2021

Pandemic stories no. 10

The outbreak of ‘Asiatic cholera’ in 1831-3 caused over 50,000 deaths across the British Isles. The response to this pandemic was mainly organised locally, with many towns and cities – including Manchester – setting up a Special Board of Health. In Manchester, as elsewhere, the Board was manned by a combination of local worthies, officials, medical men and clergymen.

An ongoing concern of the Manchester Board during the pandemic was to balance public health with economic considerations. On 3 September 1832, it therefore resolved that ‘in consequence of there having been several incorrect reports of the state of cholera in Manchester, the Board of Health established in that Town - fearing that the trade of the Town may suffer from the exaggerated reports made - think it necessary to publish a statement [in local newspapers] of the cases which have occurred’.

The Board also used placards to spread public health information – e.g. about the availability of free medicines and about cholera hospitals. A further theme in this advertising campaign was the importance of avoiding intoxicating liquor: since ‘Drunkenness has often been followed by cholera and the disease has almost always been fatal in a few hours’.

RSLC, volume 145: The Challenge of Cholera: Proceedings of the Manchester Special Board of Health 1831-1833, edited by Alan Kidd and Terry Wyke:http://rslc.org.uk/api/file/Vol_145.pdf

Image: A victim of the 1830s cholera outbreak, who died in Sunderland. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images