There was perhaps nothing very unusual in such instances of country fevers at the beginning of the century. The incident is exactly in the manner of one that figures prominently in a story of Scottish life and customs at the same period, which long passed current as a faithful picture and as enforcing a much-needed moral[294].

Comparative immunity from Fevers during the War and high prices of 1803-15.

From 1803 to 1816 there was comparatively little fever in this country. This was notably the case in London, but it was also true of all the larger towns where fever-hospitals had been established, and it was as true of Ireland as of England. This was, indeed, a time of great prosperity, which reached to all classes, the permanent rise of wages having more than balanced the increased cost of the necessaries of life. The following prices of wheat will show that a dear loaf did not necessarily mean distress while the war-expenditure lasted:

Prices of wheat (from Tooke).

s. d.
1802 57 1
1803 52 3
1804Lady Day 49 6
Dec. 86 2
1805Aug. 98 4
Dec. 74 5
1806 73 5
1807Nov. 66
1808May 73 6
Dec. 92
1809March 95
July 86 6
Dec. 102 6
1810June 113 5
Dec. 94 7
1811June 86 11
Nov. 101 6
1812Aug. 155
Nov. 113 6
1813Aug. 112
Dec. 73 6
1814July 66 5
1815Dec. 53 7
1816May 74
Dec. 103
1817June 111 6
1817Sept. 77 7
1818Dec. 78 10
1819Aug. 75
1820 72
1821July 51
Dec. 50
1822 42
1823Feb. 40 8
June 62 5
Oct. 46 5
Dec. 50 8
1824 65

The only years in the period from 1803 to 1816 in which there was some slight increase of fever were about 1811-12. There was undoubtedly some distress in the manufacturing districts at that time, owing to the much talked-of Orders in Council, which had the effect of closing American markets to British manufactures[295].

The small amount of fever in London between the year 1803 and the beginning of the epidemic of 1817-19 rests on the testimony of Bateman[296], who in 1804 took up Willan’s task of keeping a systematic record of the cases at the Carey Street Dispensary. He has only two special entries relating to typhus: one in the autumn of 1811, when some cases occurred in the uncleanly parts of Clerkenwell and St Luke’s (“but I have not learned that it has existed in any other districts of London”); the other in October and November 1813, when there was more typhus among the Irish in some of the filthy courts of Saffron Hill, near Hatton Garden, than for several years past, the infection having spread rapidly and fatally in several houses. The best evidence of this lull in typhus in London is the almost empty state of the new fever-hospital:

Year Admissions
1802 164
1803 176
1804 80
1805 66
1806 93
1807 63
1808 69
1809 29
1810 52
1811 43
1812 61
1813 85
1814 59
1815 80
1816 118
1817 760

Until it was removed to Pancras Road, in September, 1816, the London fever-hospital had only sixteen beds. But Bateman says that no one was refused admission, and that for several years the house was frequently empty three or four weeks together. Also at the Dispensary, in Carey Street, he had an opportunity during the period 1804-1816,