by Jean Chatterley

By the late 1880’s, following the rapid growth of Carnforth from a village to a busy manufacturing and railway centre, the situation in regard to public health was being seen as alarming by the residents.

In November 1887 the Rural Sanitary Authority (R.S.A.), a subsidiary of the Lancaster Union’s Board of Guardians¹, received a letter of complaint from a Carnforth resident (Lancaster Gazette 26 Nov 1887): it and the discussion which ensued illustrate the state of affairs as the time.

The complaint concerned a triangular plot of land behind the writer’s house, Ash Cottage, Carnforth, a former sand and gravel quarry which was being filled with town rubbish and filth from the local ash pits². Fifteen houses had backdoors within a few yards of this ‘nuisance,’ and the writer linked it to the current scarlet fever epidemic. A discussion followed: the site had been visited and indeed found to be a ‘great nuisance’; moreover, it was only 5 yards from the church, and the ‘smell experienced’ by the congregation was ‘very bad.’ There was still room for waste disposal on the shore, it was said. The homes of the scarlet fever cases had been supplied with disinfectants, and ‘all care had been taken.’ All three cases involved young children.

A month later, things were no better. Mr Jowett reported a further three fever cases in Carnforth (report of RSA meeting, 24 Dec 1887), in the same houses as the earlier cases. The premises had been fumigated and disinfectants freely used. Dr Jackson reported that there were many other fever cases and recommended ‘a thorough search round the place with regard to privies and ash pits, and also an investigation into connecting all houses with the new sewer system.’ Dr Parker, the Medical Officer for the Lancaster Union, was called upon to give a report: there had been ‘only’ 39 cases of fever in 12 months in Carnforth and in ‘that portion of Warton called Dudley’, he said,

and in the absence of an isolation hospital and compulsory notification, I do not see what the Authority can do to prevent the spread of epidemic disease. The ashpits shall be inspected, and if found to be insanitary must be cleansed out and put in proper order.

He asked that a copy of the by-laws relating to ashpits be sent to him. He went on to say that because of the three new fever cases, the trustees of the school (350 children on the roll) had thought it necessary to close the school until February 1st.

Dr Jackson thought fever cases ought to be reported to Dr Parker by law. Practitioners were not paid to do so at that time.

Matters were brought into sharper focus in the new year, January 1888. The Gazette for 7 January reported the meeting of the Guardians, as it always did, and it is worth looking at this report for the vivid picture it gives of Carnforth in 1888, of the workings of local government at the time, and of Mr Edward Barton. As well as being a Guardian, Mr Barton was the manager of the Carnforth Iron Works and was living at Warton Grange, which had been built for him on Sand Lane. The meeting was warned to take precautions against a smallpox epidemic which was spreading northwards and already ‘raging’ in Sheffield and Leeds. It was suggested, for immediate pre- cautions, that all tramps visiting the Workhouse in Lancaster be examined, and that work on the isolation hospital [now Beaumont Hospital] should be finished as soon as possible. A member of the Board wondered if the porter at the Workhouse was discriminating enough to spot smallpox cases as they entered and refer them to the M.O. It was decided to pay the M.O. extra money and ‘require him to visit the Workhouse every day, instead of twice a week, for the duration of the epidemic.

Mr Edward Barton then addressed the meeting. He expressed the ‘very strong feeling of dissatisfaction in his neighbourhood at the entire absence of any provisions for dealing with an epidemic. ‘In his district,’ he said,

many of the ashpits were erected contrary to the by laws, and although they had gone to great expense in sewering the place, many of the houses had no connection with the sewer whatever …. They might instruct the Master to be careful about the admission of tramps … but that would be no use at all at Carnforth unless they had some means of isolation open to the whole Union. At Carnforth, as they knew, the population was of a migratory character, and every day almost they had new inhabitants in the place …. they ought to get to know authoritatively … whether this hospital [the isolation wing] at the Workhouse would be available for them or not in case an epidemic broke out. .. and he would like to know .. . whether anyone, either the. medical officer, a local doctor, or anyone else had power to send a person to that hospital and demand that the person should be admitted ….

Mr Barton continued to speak plainly:

We have had fifty cases of scarlet fever in our district and not one tenth of them have been reported to the Board. If there are fifty cases of smallpox, and they are dealt with in the same way … then they will not come under the notice of the Board until it is too late.

Mr Barton spoke at length and I have been selective. His contemporaries on the Board, however, were far more verbose, and Mr Barton comes across as being comparatively blunt and direct! The discussion became quite heated, but eventually Mr Barton was obliged to accept a decision that the M.O.’s word would be sufficient.

The floor was then taken by the Sanitary Inspector who reported three more cases of scarlet fever in two of the houses already infected, and, he said

There is small pox in Sheffield, and the railway officials, though living in Carnforth, stay all night in Sheffield.

He wanted a building in Carnforth to be set aside for use as a temporary hospital, and he and Mr Thwaites, the Poor Law Guardian for Carnforth, were empowered to look for a suitable house. Another Guardian, Mr Kellet, suggested that ‘carts for collection of ashes be sent round every day for a short time until the. ashpits had been thoroughly cleaned out.’ When questioned, the Inspector explained that usually ‘the carts were sent round once a month.’ Most of the houses in Carnforth had water closets.

Yes, agreed Mr Barton, ‘but there were still a great number of houses with filthy, stinking ashpits, the contents of many of which were exposed to the weather.’ He thought Carnforth was ‘losing its character as a rural place’ because of these problems.

Finally, Mr Barton announced that:

unless some steps were taken to remedy the present state of affairs, there was only one course that would be open to them, and that was to sever themselves from the Union altogether and take measures to obtain powers to make their own. sanitary arrangements …

‘He had been agitating,’ he said, ‘for the last eight or ten years for the provision of a hospital for the isolation of cases of infectious diseases, and they did not seem to be any nearer its accomplishment …. le could take them to houses in Carnforth where there were five or six persons in one house suffering from fever.’

Two weeks later the Board met again (Gazette, 21 Jan 1888). Mr Barton’s fears were confirmed when a Clerk read letters to the effect that only paupers were entitled to beds in the Workhouse’s isolation wing. By now there were 51 cases of scarlet fever in Carnforth and Dudley, and two had died. Even so, families were unwilling to notify cases to the authorities. Three cottages on the Kellet Road had been taken with the idea of using the middle one as an infectious diseases hospital, but Dr Parker disliked the choice because it was too near other dwellings and the road. The ashpits and privies had been surveyed, and, as expected, found to be ‘in an improper condition.’ ‘In Dudley,’ Dr Parker remarked,

although the houses are in most instances provided with a means of screening their cinders and letting the ashes run into the pit of the privy, in only one or two instances were those outbuildings in proper use. In the outhouse containing the screens it is the rule to keep fowls, ducks or rabbits, which are so neglected as to give rise to an unpleasant odour. The day upon which I visited Dudley was very wet, and I observed in nearly every privy children playing; and considering the offensive state of the pits in the cleanest of privies, it cannot be considered a proper place for children to spend any length of time. The only property I could find not connected with the sewers is Midland Terrace, and two detached houses situate between the Midland Railway and the river Keer.

He then went on to make numerous recommendations. These included the Board’s Rural Sanitary Authority’s acquiring the Waterworks and compelling all houses to be supplied from it, and closing all the wells and pumps. Other measures proposed were the control of keeping fowl, etc, the paving and sewering of all the ‘back streets,’ the conversion of all privies to water closets, the covering of all ashpits, and the compelling of all owners of property to drain into the sewer. He then reported that the three cottages referred to had already been abandoned as a potential hospital: people were threatening to leave the surrounding houses! He urged the building of a proper hospital.

By the time the R.S.A. met on 4 February 1888, Mr Edward Barton had been busy investigating the possibilities of another idea to cope with the expected imminent arrival of smallpox. He could not attend the meeting in person, because of another engagement in Manchester, but by letter he offered the R.S.A. the use of the ‘barracks’ belonging to him at Warton. The Chairman, Mr Dawson, explained:

The building referred to by Mr Barton was erected in connection with the Warton embankment reclamation scheme, and was now unoccupied. It was made to accommodate about 40 men … would be available for a certain time if they liked to take it; but there was this objection, that it was a long distance from any doctor’s residence.

Other Guardians and local residents had also offered solutions. Thomas Jackson, of Hall Croft, Carnforth, offered the use of ‘any isolated portion of my ground’ if an epidemic broke out and if a mobile hospital could be provided, and this offer was considered ‘a handsome one.’ Details of two types of portable hospital were then discussed, and the R.S.A. decided upon a Docker Field Hospital. The Docker Field Hospital had two wards for eight patients, 5,200 cu. ft. of ward space. It had a room for a nurse, a roof ventilator, and ‘an arrangement for a stove.’ It weighed 64 cwt when packed up and would cost £220.

Within 3 weeks the portable hospital had been set up and was being furnished, on a site at Skerton known as the ‘Folly.’ On 25 February, Dr Jackson was asking the Board if he could use it, ‘a case had occurred at Carnforth in the house of a poor fellow who had lost his wife. He had six children, and the fever had broken out amongst them. ‘ That case was left in the hands of Dr Jackson, Dr Parker, Mr Thwaites, and Mr Jowett. (It transpired that only one of the children was infected, and the case was a mild one). By June, there were records of cases of scarlet fever being sent to the new hospital.

Interestingly, the portable hospital cost the Lancaster R.S.A. only £205.17s.0d, and the Newcastle company which produced it paid the £143 cost of transporting it!

Also interesting is that I have not so far found any reports of cases of smallpox being found in the Lancaster Union area, either in the Workhouse or amongst the migrant population of Carnforth and Dudley.

Notes

1. The Lancaster Union had been formed in the early 1840’s and comprised 19 parishes: Lancaster, Aldcliffe, Ashton-with-Stodday, Bulk, Carnforth, Cockerham, Ellel, Heaton-with-Oxcliffe, Middleton, Overton, Over Wyresdale, Priest Hutton, Scotforth, Silverdale, Skerton, Thurnham, Warton-with-Lindeth, Yealand Conyers and Yealand Redmayne. ↩︎
2. Ash pits were forerunners of dustbins ↩︎

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 10 Winter 1985