War-typhus at Tiverton in 1644.
Tiverton was then a town of some 8000 inhabitants, mostly occupied in the weaving industry. On July 5, 1644, Essex arrived with his army on his way to Cornwall to subdue prince Maurice, and lay there till the 18th. The diary of one farmer Roberts has an entry that Mr Thomas Lawrence, who came from Tiverton, reported to him that the earl had 350 and odd carriages, and of horse belonging thereto for draught 2000[1079]. This would have been his large artillery train, baggage and ammunition waggons, etc. His infantry would be some 6000, and his cavalry perhaps 1000. The king’s force meanwhile advanced after Essex, and on July 25 lay in the great meadow at Crediton. They had advanced by Yeovil and may or may not have passed through Tiverton. The two armies came to blows in Cornwall, a prolonged series of encounters in the country around Lostwithiel in wet August weather ending in the escape of Essex to the coast, the retreat of his cavalry through the Royalist lines, and the surrender of the infantry on 1st September. The disarmed foot-soldiers were convoyed back to Poole and Wareham, and did not trouble Tiverton again. The retreating cavalry passed that way, but did not enter the town, which was now held by the Royalists. But the king’s army came back by the way of Tiverton, which they reached on Saturday, the 21st September. They had got no farther than Chard on the 30th, and may have halted in Tiverton some days. A Royalist garrison of 200 men was left in it, and held the place until October 1645, when it was taken by Fairfax after a short siege[1080].
Tiverton was thus occupied by both armies in the summer and autumn of 1644, that of Essex having been quartered in and around the town for a fortnight in July. A serious epidemic followed, especially in the suburb on the western side of the Exe. The particulars of it are in the parish register, from which it would appear that the sickness began in August and lasted until November. The greatest mortality was in October, when 105 were buried, the whole mortality of the year having been 443. The ordinary monthly burials would hardly have exceeded a dozen or fifteen; and as the 105 burials in October would have meant some eight or ten times as many sick, it is not surprising to read that the town was desolate, and that grass grew in the streets[1081]. Of this epidemic there are no medical particulars; but it appears from the parish register that it was known as “the sweating sickness.” It would hardly have been so called if sweating had not been a prominent symptom. Besides the English sweat proper, with its five epidemics from 1485 to 1551, we have had occasion to notice a sweating type in several epidemics of fever. That symptom was so marked in the epidemic of 1558 at Southampton, Portsmouth, and Isle of Wight when they were full of troops, that Dr John Jones, who had personal experience of it, compares it to the sweat proper. It was a sufficiently prominent symptom in the Oxford gaol-fever of 1577 for the sudor Anglicus to be called to mind. In the English fevers and influenzas of 1580-82, a sweat or a lask is mentioned by Cogan as a least occasional; but the fevers of the same years on the Continent had so often the sweating character that it was sometimes said the English sweat had come back. Lastly for the war-fevers of 1643 around Reading and Oxford, Willis asserts in more than one place the occurrence of sweats, critical or giving relief for a time in the milder form, “deadly sweats” in fevers of an aggravated type. To anticipate somewhat, it may be mentioned also that a sweating character is recorded of some cases of the perennial London typhus at its worst period in the middle of the 18th century.
Admitting all these facts, we must still hold to the opinion expressed in the chapter on the Sweating Sickness, that sweating was never again the signum pathognomicum of a whole epidemic, as it had been of the sudor Anglicus in its five outbursts. But if there be gradations of type, or approximations of typhus to sweating sickness (as well as to influenza), then we may perhaps take the Tiverton epidemic as coming nearer than any other to the sweating sickness, on the strength of the name given to it in the parish register.
Nothing is known of sickness in the army of Essex, which lay at Tiverton from 5th to 18th July, 1644. It suffered much in the fighting in Cornwall, and the Parliament on 7 September sent to Portsmouth arms for 6000 foot and 6000 suits of clothes and shirts for the infantry who had surrendered and been convoyed back along the coast. The king’s troops which occupied Tiverton on 21 September on their way back, had doubtless suffered also, from the campaigning in wet fields and miry ways, and are known to have been discontented for want of pay. Probably the epidemic at Tiverton was due to aggravation of the usual circumstances of war. It must be classed as a form of typhus; while its distinctive character of sweating might find an explanation, on the analogy of the sweat of 1485 in London after the arrival of Henry VII. from Bosworth Field, if we had sufficient reason to suppose that the soldiers who successively occupied Tiverton were not themselves suffering from fever. Contact alone, especially the contact en masse of men reduced by hardships and disorderly in their habits, will sometimes serve to breed contagion among a population unlike them in these respects. The converse of that principle, namely that contagion need not follow from the introduction of developed sickness en masse, finds an illustration in the case of Tiverton itself within little more than a year after the epidemic of 1644. In November, 1645, Fairfax lay at Ottery St Mary with his army, pending the investment of Exeter. On account of much sickness and heavy mortality among his infantry (not medically described) he removed them on December 2, to Crediton and ultimately to Tiverton, which was supposed to be a healthier situation and became his head-quarters until January 8, 1646[1082]. But no outbreak in the town is mentioned, and almost certainly none occurred; the health of the place continued to be good every year of the time that it was under the rule of the Parliament, as the parish register proves. On the other hand Totness, which was occupied by the same convalescent force after it left Tiverton, had a severe epidemic of plague in the end of the year, 1646.