Bilston was a town of 14,492 inhabitants, nearly all of the working class. It was irregularly built on high ground, full of forges and surrounded by mines. Its soil was perfectly dry “from the water having been drawn off for the purpose of getting the mines[1521].” The streets were for the most part wide and open; many houses stood in courts and back yards, but the town was so irregularly built as not to be densely crowded. The Birmingham and Staffordshire Canal passed through the whole length of the township, and there was one small brook traversing the town. The people usually earned good wages, but trade had been depressed since March, 1832. There was a good deal of drunkenness among them, and a peculiar addiction to the sports for which the Black Country is still celebrated, including at that time bull-baiting. The public health was in general good, the deaths having been 23 in May, 31 in June, and 25 in July. The churchyard of the original chapel was full; a new chapel had been built, and a burial-ground consecrated, in 1831. Bilston wake had been held on 29th July, 1832, with the usual orgies notwithstanding the depression of trade. On the night of Friday the 3rd of August a married woman in Temple Street, occupying a poor and filthy house, who had supped heartily on pig’s fry and had drunk freely of small beer, was seized with purging, which turned to fatal spasmodic cholera. Within an hour medical aid was sought for two more cases of the same in poor and filthy houses in Bridge Street and Hall Street, about four hundred yards from each other and from the house in Temple Street. At the back of the latter was a most offensive pigsty, and beyond the pigsty a poor cottage in which lived a widow and four children; cholera attacked them, two of the children dying on the 6th August and another on the 7th. The night of the 9th of August was most oppressively hot. In the week ending the 10th August there had been 150 cases and 36 deaths from cholera. On the 10th the disease appeared in a new quarter to the west, called Wynn’s Fold; the 12th was again an oppressively hot day, followed by rain over-night. On the 14th the disease began its ravages in Etlingshall Lane, at the western end of the township, a mile from the scene of the first outbreak. The attacks in the week ending 17 August had risen to 616 and the deaths to 133. On the 16th it was remarked that the flies had disappeared and the swallows with them; both came back together when the epidemic was declining. Whole families were now being cut off, father, mother and perhaps three children. Mr Leigh, the curate of the parish, went on the 18th to Birmingham to secure a supply of coffins and medical aid, the medical men of the town being worn out (two of them died a few days after). The deaths between the 19th and 26th of August numbered 309. On the latter date a dispensary was opened, after which the proportion of fatalities to attacks became less. On the 18th of September, the last death occurred, and the epidemic was over, having attacked 3568 in a population of 14,492, and destroyed 742, of whom 594 were over ten years of age. The following is the complete bill:
Cholera at Bilston, 1832.
| Week ending | Attacks | Death | Deaths under ten years | ||||
| Aug. | 10 | 150 | 36 | 5 | |||
| 17 | 616 | 133 | 23 | ||||
| 24 | 924 | 298 | 58 | ||||
| 31 | 832 | 184 | 34 | ||||
| Sept. | 7 | 694 | 62 | 18 | |||
| 14 | 250 | 23 | 6 | ||||
| 21 | 102 | 6 | 4 | ||||
| 3568 | 742 | 148 | |||||
No fewer than 450 Bilston children under the age of twelve were left orphans by the cholera; for them a national subscription was made to the amount of £8536. 8s. 7d., and applied to the building and support of a Cholera Orphan School, which was opened on the 3rd of August, 1833, the first anniversary of the outbreak of cholera in the town.
In the adjoining parish of Sedgley, although the deaths were only 290 in a larger population (20,577), the infection was as severe in certain places. “Sometimes a whole hamlet seemed to be smitten all at once, so that, in some of the streets, or rather rows of tenements, there was scarcely a house without one sick, or dying, or dead.” At Tipton, in one family of 14 no fewer than 12 died; and in eight different tenements every inhabitant was swept off. At Dudley one had a narrow escape of being buried alive. In twelve parishes or townships, with a population of 160,000, cholera attacked about 10,000 and cut off about 2000. The effects of the pestilence were all the more terrible from its swiftness, for in each parish it was in full vigour not above a month. The population of miners and iron-workers, a rough set addicted to brutal sports and to drunkenness, could not believe that brandy was not a specific, and made it circulate at funerals to fortify against infection. A reformation of morals and revival of religion is said to have followed the scourge[1522]. The following is the list of chief centres in the Black Country:
| Cholera deaths | ||
| Bilston | 693 | |
| Tipton | 281 | |
| Sedgley | 231 | |
| Dudley | 277 | |
| Wolverhampton | 193 | |
| King’s Winford | 83 | |
| Wednesbury | 78 | |
| Walsall | 77 | |
| Newcastle-under-Lyme | 60 | |
| West Bromwich | 59 | |
| Darlaston | 57 | |
| Stoke-on-Trent | 46 |
Wolverhampton, which was one of the chief Staffordshire centres of the next cholera in 1849, got off somewhat easily in 1832 with 576 attacks (193 deaths), or one in forty of the population.
It was most common and fatal in a lane called Caribee Island, a narrow filthy cul-de-sac with an open stagnant ditch down the middle, inhabited chiefly by poor Irish. The influence of ground soaked with sewage was shown also in the frequency of cases of cholera among persons in easy circumstances in the residential locality of Darlington Street—“a wide airy street consisting of two rows of houses at its upper end, nearest the centre of the town, but of only one at the lower part, where it is a raised causeway, open on one side to the gardens and meadows beyond. The lower rooms of the houses, being below the level of the street, are consequently very damp; and within a few yards of the backs of these houses runs a wide ditch, the main sewer of that side of the town, which is dammed up and diverted into several large cesspools, or receptacles for the mud and filth which it deposits. These, in warm weather, emit such offensive exhalations as to be almost intolerable to the persons who live near them.... It is singular that this was the only part of the town in which persons in easy circumstances took the disease[1523].”
The cholera had reached Liverpool in the end of April (perhaps from Hull and York), and attacked 4912 in a population of 230,000, causing 1523 deaths before the end of autumn. The very large number of cellar-dwellings and back-to-back houses in the town at that time favoured the infection; but Liverpool was on all subsequent occasions one of the worst centres. Two incidents in 1832 are connected with ships.
On 18 May, 1832, the ‘Brutus,’ of 384 tons, sailed from Liverpool for Quebec, with a crew of 19, and 330 emigrants who were pauper families from agricultural districts sent to Canada at the cost of their respective poor-law Unions. The emigrants were ill-provided with bedding and clothes, and the ship was under-provisioned. Two days after sailing, or seven days, or nine days (accounts differing), a case of cholera occurred in an adult, who recovered. Other cases quickly followed, with enormous fatality, until the deaths reached 24 in a day. On the 3rd of June the captain put back for Liverpool, his provisions having run short, and his drugs (laudanum) being exhausted. By the time the ship reached Liverpool there had been 117 cases of cholera (of which four were among the crew) and 81 deaths, seven cases remaining at her arrival, of which two ended fatally, making the deaths 83[1524].