| Locality of the Epidemic | Period | Authority | Cases | Deaths | Percentage of Fatalities | |||||
| Halifax[987] | winter of 1721 to April 1722 | Nettleton, Phil. Trans. XXXII. 51 | 276 | 43 | 15·9 | |||||
| Rochdale[988] | " | " | 177 | 38 | 21·4 | |||||
| Leeds[989] | " | " | 792 | 189 | 23·8 | |||||
| Halifax parish towards Bradford | 1722 | Ibid. p. 221 | 297 | 59 | 19·9 | |||||
| Halifax parish, another part | " | " | 268 | 28 | 10·4 | |||||
| Bradford | " | " | 129 | 36 | 27·9 | |||||
| Wakefield | " | " | 418 | 57 | 13·6 | |||||
| Ashton under Lyne[990] | " | " | 279 | 56 | 20·0 | |||||
| Macclesfield | " | " | 302 | 37 | 12·2 | |||||
| Stockport | " | " | 287 | 73 | 25·4 | |||||
| Hatherfield | " | " | 180 | 20 | 11·1 | |||||
| Chichester[991] | 1722 (to 15 Oct.) | Whitaker, Ibid. p. 223 | 994 | 168 | 16·9 | |||||
| Haverfordwest | 1722 | Perrot Williams, Ibid. | 227 | 52 | 22·9 | |||||
| Barstand, Ripponden, Sorby, and part of Halifax parish 4 miles from the town | " | Nettleton, in Jurin’s Acct. for 1723, p. 7 | 230 | 38 | 16·5 | |||||
| Bolton | 1723? | Jurin’s Acct. for 1723, p. 8 | 406 | 89 | 21·6 | |||||
| Ware | " | " | 612 | 72 | 11·7 | |||||
| Salisbury | " | " | 1244 | 165 | 13·2 | |||||
| Rumsey, Hants | " | " | 913 | 143 | 15·6 | |||||
| Havant | " | " | 264 | 61 | 23·1 | |||||
| Bedford | " | " | 786 | 147 | 18·4 | |||||
| Shaftesbury | 1724? | Ibid. for 1724, p. 12 | 660 | 100 | 15·1 | |||||
| Dedham, near Colchester | " | " | 339 | 106 | 31·3 | |||||
| Plymouth | " | " | 188 | 32 | 17·2 | |||||
| Aynho, near Banbury | 27 Sept. 1723 to 29 Dec. 1724 | Rev. Mr Wasse, rector, Ibid. for 1725, p. 55 | 133 | 25 | 18·8 | |||||
| Stratford on Avon | " | Dr Letherland, Ibid. | 562 | 89 | 15·8 | |||||
| Bolton le Moors | " | Dr Dixon, Ibid. | 341 | 64 | 18·8 | |||||
| Cobham | " | Sir Hans Sloane, Ibid. | 105 | 20 | 19·0 | |||||
| Dover | 29 Sept. 1725 to 25 Dec. 1726 | Dr Lynch of Canterbury, in Jurin’s Acct. for 1726, p. 17 | 503 | 61 | 12·1 | |||||
| Deal | 25 Dec. 1725 to 29 Nov. 1726 | " | 362 | 33 | 9·1 | |||||
| Kemsey, near Worcester | " | Dr Beard, in Jurin, Ibid. | 73 | 15 | 20·5 | |||||
| Uxbridge[992] | 1727 | Dr Thorold, in Scheuchzer’s Acct. for 1727 and 1728 | 140 | 51 | 36·4 | |||||
| Hastings | 1729-30 | Dr Frewen, Phil. Trans. XXXVII. 108 | 705 | 97 | 13·7 |
The years 1722 and 1723, to which most of these epidemics belong, were one of the greater smallpox periods in England. In Short’s abstracts of the parish registers those years stand out very prominently by reason of the excess of deaths over births in a large proportion of country parishes (see above, p. 66); and, according to Wintringham’s annals, it was not fever that made them fatal years, but smallpox, along with autumnal dysenteries and diarrhoeas. Of one epidemic centre in the winter of 1721-22, which is not in the table, the district of Hertford, we obtain a glimpse from Maitland, who repaired thither from London to practise inoculation.
“I own that it seem’d probable that the six persons in Mr Batt’s family might have catched the smallpox of the girl that was inoculated; but it is well-known that the smallpox were rife, not only at Hertford but in several villages round it, many months before any person was inoculated there: witness Mr Dobb’s house in Christ’s Hospital buildings, where he himself died of the worst sort with purples, and his children had it; some other families there, and particularly Mr Moss’s, (where the above-named Elizabeth Harrison, inoculated in Newgate, attended several persons under it to prove whether she would catch the distemper by infection); both Latin boarding-schools, Mr Stout’s and Mr Lloyd’s families, Mr John Dimsdale’s coachman and his wife, and Mr Santoon’s maid-servant, who was brought to the same house and died of the confluent kind of the smallpox[993].”
Here we have the same indication of adults attacked as well as children, which we find in Dover’s practice in London in 1720 and in all the 17th century and early 18th century references to smallpox. The most detailed account is that given for the epidemic of 1724-25 at Plymouth by Huxham, who was not an inoculator but purely an epidemiologist and practitioner in the old manner.
The epidemic was a very severe one and of an anomalous type. Adults, according to his particular references and his general statement, must have been freely attacked. The major part of the adult cases, he says, proved fatal, including one of an old gentlewoman of 72,—“a very uncommon exit for a person of her years”! When the disease raged most severely, some children had it very favourably and required no other physic than to be purged at the end of the attack. The pustules were apt to be small and to remain unfilled. In some there were miliary vesicles, dark red or filled with limpid serum, in the interstices between the smallpox pustules. Some had abundance of purple petechiae among the pocks, the latter also being livid. Only one person survived of all who had that haemorrhagic type. Swelling of the face and throat was also seldom recovered from; in such cases that did well, the maxillary and parotid glands would remain swollen for some time. “It was a remarkable instance of the extraordinary virulence of these smallpox that the women (tho’ they had had the smallpox before and some very severely too) who constantly attended those ill of the confluent kind, whether children or grown persons, had generally several pustules broke out on their face, hands and breast.... I knew one woman that had more than forty on one side of her face and breast, the child she attended frequently leaning on those parts on that side.”
Huxham appears to have adopted the whole Sydenhamian practice of blooding, blistering, purging, and salivating. For the last he used calomel: “Two adults and some children in the confluent sort never salivated. Some very young children drivelled exceedingly through the course of the distemper. A diarrhoea very seldom happened to children[994].”
Corresponding very nearly in time to Huxham’s malignant and anomalous constitution of smallpox at Plymouth, and agreeing exactly with his generalities as to children and adults, there is an interesting table of the ages and fatalities of those who were attacked at Aynho, in Northamptonshire, six miles from Banbury. It was then a small market town, and its smallpox for some fifteen months of 1723-24, as recorded by the rector of the parish, may be taken as a fair instance of what happened at intervals (usually long ones) in the rural districts in the earlier years of the 18th century[995]:
| Ages | 0-1 | -2 | -3 | -4 | -5 | -10 | -15 | -20 | -25 | -30 | -40 | -50 | -60 | -70 | above 70 | Total | ||||||||||||||||
| Cases | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 15 | 33 | 14 | 16 | 9 | 12 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 132 | ||||||||||||||||
| Deaths | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 25 |
The small fatality of the disease between the ages of five years and twenty is according to the experience of all times. But the considerable proportion of attacks at the higher ages would hardly have been found anywhere in England, not even in a country parish, a generation or two later, although it is consistent with all that is known of smallpox in the 17th century and in the first years of the 18th[996].
Another glimpse of a prolonged smallpox epidemic of the same period in a town is given in Frewen’s census of Hastings, with a population of 1636 (males 782, females 854). The disease was prevalent for about a year and a half, and had ceased previous to 28 January, 1732[997]. The table accounts for the whole population: