If some memorable occurrences in local history may be termed ‘red lettered,’ the fearful visitations of this epidemic in 1832 and 1848 may be said to have been black, and very black lettered events indeed. The steady march of this dire disease from Asia over the continent of Europe towards our shores in 1831 created the utmost alarm of approaching danger, and led to precautionary measures being taken. Medical science however was at fault; contradictory advice was given; orders in council were issued and withdrawn; and people were at their wits’ end what steps to take. A rigid system of quarantine was at first enforced; and when the enemy did arrive it was ordered that each infected district or house was to be isolated and shut up within itself, and the inhabitants cut off from communication with other parts of the country; and ‘all articles of food or other necessaries were to be placed in front of the house, and received by the inhabitants after the person delivering them had retired.’ It was in fact the exploit over again of the gallant gentleman who proposed, as Milton says, to ‘pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.’ Clinging to the belief that the disease was imported and spread by contagion, few really remedial measures founded on the hypothesis of the low sanitary condition of the population—as bad drainage, ill-ventilated and overcrowded dwellings, offensive sewers, unwholesome water, and the thousand other kindred abominations which afflict the poor, were suggested. But feelings and sympathies were naturally with the patient and against the unchristian edict which said to him—‘Thou art sick, and we visit thee not; thou art in prison, and we come not unto thee’. Gradually too it dawned upon the minds of the authorities—as the result of observation and experience—that it was not so much from direct communication that persons were affected, as from bad sanitary conditions;—for persons were not consecutively affected who lived in the same house or slept in the same bed with the sick; and that children even suckled by mothers labouring under the disease escaped. On Wednesday, the 21st of March, 1832, there was a general fast for deliverance from the plague, as it was called, but it was pretty much the same as Æsop’s case of the carter who prayed Jupiter to get his cart wheel out of the rut; and the answer vouchsafed by Providence was similar—‘put your own shoulder to the wheel’, do what you can first to make the people clean and wholesome. We have no statistics or recorded facts to fall back upon, but so far as our knowledge and experience serves us we should say that the first victims in this neighbourhood were among men and women who led irregular lives, and who lived in dirty ill-ventilated homes, and in the decks and cabins of barges going long voyages, in which men slept and ate their meals; and persons on the banks of the Severn, who drank the polluted water of the river. A case occurred at Coalport, on the 21st of July, 1832, on board a barge on the Severn, which belonged to owner Jones; and it was thought prudent to sink the vessel to destroy the contagion. A man named Richard Evans also was taken with the cholera on board a Shrewsbury barge, and was removed to the “Big House,” as it was called, at the Calcutts, which had been hired and set apart by Mr. George Pritchard and others for the reception of victims. On the 23rd, Thomas Oakes, son of John Oakes, died on board Dillon Lloyd’s vessel, and during that month and the next the plague continued its ravages by the Severn. From an old diary we learn that a man named Goosetree, his wife, and three children, were seized on the 14th of August at the Coalport Manufactory, and died the same day; as also did a Mrs. Baugh and her mother.
The more ignorant of the people were suspicious of the doctors; Mr. Thursfield on the 23rd of July visited a house at Coalford, and offered a draught to a woman whom he suspected of shewing symptoms of the disease, but was beaten off by her daughter Kitty, who said her mother wanted food and not medicine. The doctor does not appear to have been popular judging from doggrel lines in circulation at the time—
‘The cholera morbus is begun
And Dr. Thursfield is the mon
To carry the cholera morbus on.’
A man named William Titley, whilst drinking, dancing, and singing this to a public house company, was taken with the disease, and died next day. William Fletcher, a carpenter, whilst employed in making the coffin intended for Titley, was seized, and died next day, and was buried in the coffin he had made for another. A few days after, on the 14th of September, Israel Weager, a barge block-maker, who wore dirty and greasy clothes, who was grimy and dirty also in his person, and worked in a wretched shed by the Robin Hood public house, was another taken about the same time who died. During the remainder of the same month, and those of October, November, and December, the cholera continued to find victims. Men drank hard to ward off the disease and sowed the seeds which brought it on. Men and women were taken ill, died, and were buried the same day; and some were probably buried before they were dead. One man, a well known cock-fighter at Broseley, was attacked with the disease, and so stupefied by brandy that he was supposed to be dead. He was taken to the cholera ground adjoining Jackfield church on the hill, and the rattle of the soil upon the coffin which accompanied the words “ashes to ashes” &c., roused him from his stupor, when the bystanders hearing a noise lifted the lid and the old cocker came forth. [253] We believe his name was William Roberts, judging from the diary before mentioned, and that the event occurred on the 14th of September; and that on the 1st of October his wife and two children died of the plague, and were buried the same day. At many places it was much worse than it was here. At Bilston, for instance, it raged so fiercely that forty-five victims died in one day; and not less than twenty for several days running; and their neighbours at Birmingham presented a waggon load of coffins, as being the most acceptable present they could make. It was bad enough here; church bells were tolling, hearses and cholera carts were in motion often, and at untimely hours, early and late, by torch light, or accompanied by the feeble light of a lantern; and a melancholy sadness settled upon all. Many journeys were made by the “cholera cart from the Workhouse” to Madeley church-yard, with just sufficient of the inmates of the house to convey the corpse to the hole dug for it. It must not be supposed however that the victims to this terrible plague were confined to the lower classes, many of the well-to-do were stricken and died: the sister of the present Lord Forester, we are informed by the diary referred to, died on the 23rd of July of cholera in London. At last the evil spent itself and subsided; it was a fearful curse, but it had the effect of convincing us that something more than fasts and well-seasoned sermons were needed to prevent or remove the epidemic: and so much was done by public attention being called to the effects bad sanitary conditions had on the physical causes of sickness and mortality, by Dr. Southwood Smith in 1838, and by evidence by Mr. Slaney, M.P., for Shrewsbury, who obtained a select committee to enquire into the circumstances affecting the health of the inhabitants of large towns, with a view to improved sanitary regulations for their benefit, in 1840, that the knowledge gained enabled medical men successfully to grapple with the epidemic when it again threatened to spread itself over the country in 1848.
THE SEVERN.
The Severn at present is of little service to the parishioners of Madeley, either as a source of food or a means of transit, compared with what it was in former times. Yet washing as it does the whole of the western side of the parish, from Marnwood brook to the brook which separates Madeley and Sutton parishes, it deserves notice. There was a time when it supplied a considerable portion of food to those living upon its banks; and when, whilst other parts of the country, less favoured, were labouring under the disadvantages of land conveyance, over roads scarcely passable, and by machines but imperfectly constructed, its navigation conferred superior privileges; both by the importation of hay, corn, groceries &c., and the exportation of mines and metals produced along the valley through which it runs. The river, inconsiderable in its origin, is indebted for its navigable importance to physical peculiarities of country that constitute its basins. An extensive water-shed of hills, whose azure tops court the clouds, brings down a large amount of rain to swell the volume of its stream. From its source to its estuary in the Bristol Channel it gathers as it rolls from rivers and brooks, which, after irrigating rich pasture lands along their banks, pour their waters into its channel. The Teme, augmented by the Clun, the Ony, the Corve, the Avon, and the Wye, having each performed similar pilgrimages through flower-dotted fields, also pay tribute of their waters. Here weaving its way through a carpet of the richest green it visits sheep-downs, cattle-pastures, orchards, hop-plantations, and hay-producing fields, as it sweeps along, conferring benefit upon the soil, increasing the fertility of fields, aiding in the development of mines, linking important wealth producing districts, bringing materials for manufacturing purposes together, and transporting their products to the sea.
This formerly more than now, so that Agriculture, and commerce felt its quickening influence and bore witness to its sway. Feeders, which capital with talismanic touch opened up by cuttings on the plain, aqueducts or embankments across the vale, tunnels, locks, and other contrivances among the hills to overcome inequalities of surface ran miles through inland districts to collect its traffic. The Shropshire, the Shrewsbury, and the Ellesmere Canals, united the Severn, the Mersey, and the Dee, and the rival ports, Liverpool and Bristol. Shrewsbury, Coalbrookdale, Coalport, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Stourport, Worcester, and Gloucester, were centres from which its traffic flowed; iron crude and malleable, brick and tile, earthenware and pipes, were sent, the former in large quantities from wharfs at Coalbrookdale, and from others between Ironbridge and Coalport. The Shropshire trade was carried on by means of vessels from 40 to 78 and 80 tons burthen, drawing from three to four feet, which went down with the stream, and were drawn back by horses, or men or both. In consequence of the rapidity of the current over the fords not more than 20, 30, or 40 tons were usually carried up the river. About 20 voyages in the year were usually made by regular traders, but vessels carrying iron made more. The time occupied for full cargoes to get down to Gloucester was about 24 hours.
In 1756, there were at Madeley-Wood, 21 owners of vessels of 39 vessels. But many more than these came to the Meadow, and Coalport wharves. Hulbert, writing about half a century ago says: “standing upon Coalport bridge I have counted seventy barges standing at Coalport Wharf, some laden and others loading with coal and iron.” Madeley-Wood supplied fire-clay and fire-bricks for many years to the porcelain and other works at Worcester. Originally, when Fuller speaks of coals being exported by barges, and when during the Civil Wars the Parliamentary forces planted a garrison at Benthall to prevent the barges carrying coal down the river, vessels were drawn against the stream by strings of men linked to ropes by loops or bows, who were called bow-haulers. It was slavish work; and Richard Reynolds was so struck with the hardship and unfitness of the practice that he exerted himself to obtain an Act of Parliament for the construction of a road by the side of the river, now called the towing path, by which horses were substituted. Sometimes, when a favourable wind blew against the stream, vessels with all sails set would make good progress without further assistance; and it was a pleasing sight to see these and the larger ones, the trows, sailing along the valley. Had means been taken to improve the channel of the Severn, this noble river, navigable for 180 miles, may have been in a much more flourishing condition than at present.
Like opposing interests for and against improvements in the channel, between which the battle of locks and weirs was fought, two opposing forces have been striving for mastery in the tideway of the channel. One contending for an estuary, the other for a delta. Draining a district six thousand square miles in extent, having a fall of two hundred and twenty feet in its descent from its source on Plynlymmon, (1,500 feet above the sea line), to its tideway in the Bristol Channel, and being fed by boisterous brooks and precipitous streams that cut their way through shales and clays and sand-rocks, it is not surprising that the Severn should bring down a vast amount of silt to raise its bed. To correct these irregularities along a portion of the river, improvements, projected by Sir William Cubitt, some years since, were completed at very considerable outlay, after an expenditure of £70,000 before the sanction of Parliament could be obtained. Above Stourport, where these improvements terminate, the river is still in a state of nature. Except some pedling attempts by means of earth, loose stones, or sinking some dilapidated boats along the side, nothing has been done to improve the channel. The scouring action of the stream constantly undermines the banks. These give way after every flood, and come down to choke the river, or to change the channel, and every newly-formed shoal sends the stream at right angles to its bed to make fresh attempts upon its banks. Fords that served our painted ancestors to make incursions beyond their boundaries, bends almost amounting to circles around which they paddled their canoes, impede navigation still. Attempts to overcome these natural obstacles to its navigation were made as early as 1784, when Mr. Jessop proposed to render the river navigable for vessels drawing four feet at all seasons of the year from Worcester to Coalbrookdale. He proposed to obtain a sufficient depth for that purpose at all seasons of the year by the erection of 13 or 14 weirs between those places; he also recommended that that depth should be obtained below Diglis by dredging and correcting the natural channel of the river, and the Stafford and Worcester Canal Company, joined by the iron manufacturers of Shropshire, applied in the year 1786 to parliament for powers to carry out Mr. Jessop’s recommendations, so far as they related to the portion of the river described in the title of the bill, as from Meadow-wharf, Coalbrookdale, to the deep water at Diglis, below the city of Worcester. The bill was lost owing to the objections on the part of the public to the erection of locks and weirs, and owing to the dislike of the carriers to pay toll at all seasons of the year. As it is, there are often three, four, and five months when barges cannot navigate the river with a freight equal to defray the expenses of working them; indeed, instances have occurred in which in only two months of the twelve the river could be advantageously worked. Besides the additional wear and tear, more strength is required to work the vessel, and it takes treble the time to convey 15 tons at low water as it does four times that weight at other times.
To improvements that affect only a portion of the river, and that the lower portion, the Shropshire traders very naturally took objection. They saw that for any benefit to be derived from navigating the lower portion of the Severn they would be taxed, without being able themselves to participate in it, and at a meeting of iron and coal masters, Severn carriers, and others, held at the Tontine Inn, Ironbridge, on the 2nd of December, 1836, for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of opposing the project of the Worcester Severn Navigation Company, for the introduction of locks and weirs upon the river, Richard Darby, Esq., in the chair, it was resolved,