The Newcastle Dispensary, like that of Whitehaven, treated a small fraction of all the cases of smallpox in the town; but it continued to have a fair average of cases and deaths after the century was turned:
Smallpox cases attended from Newcastle Dispensary.
| Cases | Deaths | |||
| 1795 | 7 | 1 | ||
| 1796 | 19 | 3 | ||
| 1797 | 12 | 0 | ||
| 1798 | 15 | 3 | ||
| 1799 | — | — | ||
| 1800 | — | — | ||
| 1801 | 14 | 4 | ||
| 1802 | — | — | ||
| 1803 | 7 | 4 | ||
| 1804 | 0 | 0 | ||
| 1805 | 7 | 0 | ||
| 1806 | 16 | 6 |
Most places continued to have their periodical epidemics of smallpox as before, although both measles and scarlatina were becoming more and more its rivals. Boston, Lincolnshire, had its sexennial epidemic in 1802 with thirty-three deaths. Besides the year 1805, there were two periods in which smallpox was somewhat general, 1807-9 and 1811-13. At Norwich from 1807 to the end of 1809 the bills of mortality showed 203 deaths from smallpox[1090]. In 1808 we happen to hear of it also at Sherborne, in Dorset, at Ringwood, in Hampshire, at Cheltenham, at Cambridge and at Edinburgh, although the great epidemic malady of children in that year was measles[1091]. Lettsom wrote on 25 January, 1808: “The smallpox (infanticides) and measles have been prevalent and fatal. The coffins for the parish poor in England for the smallpox deaths alone have cost £10,000[1092].”
In 1811 it began to be somewhat general again, and rose in London to a considerable epidemic in 1812, the deaths in summer rising to sixty in a week[1093]. A village epidemic of 46 cases and 7 deaths is reported from North Queensferry, near Edinburgh, from 14 December, 1811 to 7 March, 1812[1094]. At Norwich from 10 February to 3 September, 1813, there were 65 deaths[1095]. The rise from 1811 to 1813 coincided with an increase of fever, the winter of 1811-12 having been a time of dearth and depressed trade, especially in the manufacturing districts. After that came a notable lull both in fever and smallpox, which was at length broken by the epidemics of each in 1817 in Ireland, Scotland and England, coincidently with the depression of trade and dislocation of commerce that began everywhere as soon as the great war was over.
The Smallpox Epidemic of 1817-19.
The same things that favoured the prevalence of typhus and relapsing fever in times of distress, favoured also the rise of smallpox to the height of an epidemic. Hence the greater epidemics of smallpox in the first half of the 19th century coincided somewhat closely with epidemics of relapsing or typhus fever,—in 1817-19, in 1825-27, in 1837-40, and in 1847-49. That which fever was to the adolescents and adults in times of distress, the same was smallpox to the infants and young children. The young children of a family did, indeed, take fever sometimes as well as the parents or the young persons in it; but the children seldom died of it. They died of smallpox (or of measles or whooping cough or the like), perhaps all the more readily that they would have been weakened by the fever, and by the want of food and comforts which attended it. Thus, while fever and smallpox went somewhat closely hand in hand during times of distress, it was the adolescents and adults that died of fever, the infants and young children that died of smallpox. The following table, compiled from the reports of the Whitehaven Dispensary from 1783 to 1800, will show how many children survived attacks of continued fever in comparison with their elders[1096]:
Continued Fever at Whitehaven Dispensary, 1783-1800.
| Total | Under 2 years | 2-5 | -10 | -15 | -20 | -30 | -40 | -50 | -60 | -70 | -80 | |||||||||||||
| Cases | 1712 | 40 | 142 | 240 | 223 | 150 | 240 | 236 | 202 | 92 | 47 | 15 | ||||||||||||
| Deaths | 85 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 14 | 20 | 19 | 12 | 7 | 0 |