IRISH-IN-UK-L Archives

From: "Jean R." <>
Subject: [Irish-in-UK] Cholera in "Irishtown, " Manchester,England 1832 - Sir James KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH -- Knott Hill Hospital
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:26:13 -0700

SNIPPET: MANCHESTER -- "I had requested the younger members of the staff,
charged with the visitation of the outpatients of the infirmary, to give me
the earliest information of the occurrence of any cases indicating the
approach of cholera. I had a scientific wish to trace the mode of its
propagation, and to ascertain if possible by what means it would be
introduced into the town. My purpose also was to discover whether there was
any, and if so what, link or connection between the physical and social
evils, to which my attention had been so long directed.

A loop of the river Medlock swept round by a group of houses lying
immediately below Oxford Road, and also on the level of the black, polluted
stream. This was a colony of Irish labourers and consequently known as
Irishtown. I was requested by one of the staff of the outpatients of the
infirmary to visit a peculiar case in one of these cottages. On my arrival
in a two-roomed house, I found an Irishman lying on a bed close to the
window. The temperature of his skin was somewhat lower than usual, the pulse
was weak and quick. He complained of no pain. The face was rather pale, and
the man much dejected. None of the characteristic symptoms of cholera had
occurred, but his attendant told me that the strength had gradually declined
during the day, and that, seeing no cause for it, he had formed a suspicion
of contagion. I sat by the man's bed for an hour, during which the pulse
became gradually weaker. In the second hour it was almost extinct, and it
became apparent that the patient would die. His wife and three children were
in the room, and she was prepared for us by the too probable event. Thus the
afternoon slowly passed away, and as evening approached I sent the young
surgeon to have in readiness the cholera van not far away. We were
surrounded by an excitable Irish population, and it was obviously desirable
to remove the body as soon as possible, and then the family, and to lock up
the house before any alarm was given. As twilight came on the sufferer
expired without cramp or any other characteristic symptom. The wife had been
soothed and she readily consented to be removed with her children to the
hospital. Then suddenly the van drew up at the door, and in one minute,
before the Irish were aware, drove away with its sad burden.

No case of Asiatic cholera had occurred in Manchester, yet notwithstanding
the total absence of characteristic symptoms in this case, I was convinced
that the contagion had arrived, and the patient had been its victim. The
Knott Hill Hospital was a cotton factory stripped of its machinery, and
furnished with iron bedsteads and bedding on every floor. On my arrival here
I found the widow and her three children with a nurse grouped round a fire
at one end of a gloomy ward. I ascertained that all necessary arrangement
had been made for their comfort. They had an evening meal; the children were
put to bed near the fire, except the infant which I left lying upon its
mother's lap. None of them showed any sign of disease, and I left the ward
to take some refreshment. On my return, or at a later visit before midnight,
the infant had been sick in it's mother's lap, had made a faint cry and had
died. The mother was naturally full of terror and distress, for the child
had had no medicine, had been fed only from its mother's breast, and,
consequently, she could have no doubt that it perished from the same causes
as its father. I sat with her and the nurse by the fire very late into the
night. While I was there the children did not wake, nor seem in any way
disturbed, and at length I thought I might myself seek some repose. When I
returned about six o'clock in the morning, another child had severe cramps
with some sickness, and while I stood by the bedside, it died. Then, later,
the third and eldest child had all the characteristic symptoms of cholera
and perished in one or two hours. In the course of the day the mother
likewise suffered from a severe and rapid succession of the characteristic
symptoms and died, so that within twenty-four hours the whole family was
extinct, and it was not known that any other case of cholera had occurred in
Manchester or its vicinity."

-- First-hand account, Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, "Eyewitness to History,
ed. J. Carey (1987)

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• [Irish-in-UK] Cholera in "Irishtown, " Manchester,England 1832 - Sir James KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH -- Knott Hill Hospital by "Jean R." <>