Fevers in the Dearth of 1799-1802.
Although Willan chooses the end of the year 1799 to enlarge upon the London fever, he does not connect it with the dearth that was already beginning to be felt (soup kitchens having been opened in various parts of London). The price of wheat, which had been steadily about 50s. in 1797 and 1798, rose in May, 1799 to 61s. 8d., after a hard winter which had probably injured the autumn-sown corn. The harvest turned out ill, and the price of wheat rose in December, 1799, to 94s. 2d. Bounties were offered on imported foreign grain, but in June, 1800, the price was 134s. 5d., falling in August to 96s. 2d. on the crops promising well. The latter end of harvest proved wet, much of the grain being lost, so that the price per quarter of wheat rose to 133s. in December. There was much suffering, and some rioting. Parliament met on the 11th November, 1800, on account of the dearth, the opinions of the members being much divided as to the causes of the high prices. In March, 1801, wheat was at 156s. 2d. per quarter, beef from 10d. to 10½d. per pound, mutton 11d. to 12d. per pound. It is to this year, when the quartern loaf was at one-and-eightpence, that a comparison by Arthur Young belongs, showing the great change in the purchasing power of wages[288]. By the end of summer, 1801, wheat rose to 180s., and the quartern loaf was for four weeks at 1s. 10½d.
Whatever statistics were then kept of fever-cases, show a decided rise in the years 1800 and 1801:
| Year | Manchester House of Recovery (fever-cases) | Glasgow Royal Infirmary (fever-cases) | Newcastle Dispensary (fever-cases) | London Bills of Mortality (fever-deaths) | ||||
| 1796 | 371 | 43 | 201 | 1547 | ||||
| 1797 | 339 | 83 | 65 | 1526 | ||||
| 1798 | 398 | 45 | 67 | 1754 | ||||
| 1799 | 364 | 128 | — | 1784 | ||||
| 1800 | 747 | 104 | — | 2712 | ||||
| 1801 | 1070 | 63 | 425 | 2908 | ||||
| 1802 | 601 | 104 | — | 2201 | ||||
| 1803 | 256 | 85 | 352 | 2326 | ||||
| 1804 | 184 | 97 | 255 | 1702 | ||||
| 1805 | 268 | 99 | 74 | 1307 |
The London Fever Hospital was not opened until February, 1802, a small house in Gray’s Inn Lane containing sixteen beds. It came at the end of the epidemic, and was in small request during the next fifteen years. The same epidemic at Leeds was the occasion of opening a House of Recovery there in 1804, twenty-five years after Lucas had first called for it. The state of affairs in Leeds, which at length moved the richer classes to that step, is thus described by Whitaker[289]:
“In the years 1801 and 1802 an alarming epidemic fever spread in Leeds and the neighbourhood. The contagion extended so rapidly and proved so fatal that some hundreds were affected at the same time, and two medical gentlemen, with several nurses, fell victims to the disease.... In 1802 whole streets were infected house by house; in one court, of crowded population, typhus raged for four months successively.”
One of the Leeds physicians, Dr Thorp, seized the occasion to urge the need of a fever hospital, in a pamphlet written in 1802, in which he said:
“In a visit made a few days ago to those abodes of misery, I saw in one particular district upwards of twenty-five families ill in contagious fever. In some houses two, in others six or seven [families] were confined, many of whom appeared to be in extreme danger.” The superintendent of the sick poor stated to Dr Thorp “that sixty families in epidemic fever are under his care at this time. New applications are making daily. In some families three, in others six or seven, are in the disease. Forty persons in fever have applied to him for medical aid within the present week[290].”
The wonder is that, with the enormous prices of food, things were not worse. At the time when provisions were dearest, work was slack in several industries. A commercial report of 1 April, 1801, speaks of the trade of Birmingham as very distressed, a large proportion of the men being out of work; the ribbon trade of Coventry was deplorable, and the woollen trade of Yorkshire still worse. Evidence of epidemic typhus in various parts of England came out in connexion with the reports on influenza in 1803. Holywell, in Flintshire, with a large cotton-making industry, had not been free from a bad kind of typhus for two years previous to the influenza of 1803[291]. In Bristol there was a good deal of fever in 1802-3, which found its way, through domestic servants, into good houses in Clifton, “and proved fatal in some instances[292].” It is probable that these are only samples, the writings on epidemics being singularly defective at this period. The following, dated 10th April, 1802, by a surgeon at Earlsoham, near Framlingham, Suffolk, gives us a glimpse of malignant contagious fever in a farm-house:
“The most prevailing epidemics for the last twelve months have been typhus maligna and mitior, scarlatina anginosa, measles, and mumps. Many of the former have proved alarmingly fatal in several of our villages, whilst those of the second class of typhoid fevers have put on the appearance of the low nervous kind attended with great prostration of strength, depression of spirits, loss of appetite, etc., which frequently continue many weeks before a compleat recovery ensues.” Five cases, of “the most malignant kind of typhus,” occurred in a farmer’s family: one of the sons, aged eighteen, died in a few days with delirium, and black sordes of the mouth, tongue and throat; then the father, two daughters, and another son, took the infection but all escaped with their lives. Of four persons who nursed them, one caught the fever, and died. Four persons in a neighbouring family, who visited them, took infection, of whom two died[293].