14th May 1796. God’s Visitation.
‘Whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God’s visitation’: The 1662 Prayer Book and by implication the result of sinful behaviour. (1)
Today saw Edward Jenner’s first vaccination against smallpox in 1796, a disease with a fatality rate of 30%. However despite the ever presence of early death in the 18th century, 10% of England’s population was aged over 60.
After the 1875 Public Health Act people were legally bound to take precautions against the spread of smallpox and a surviving poster of the Borough of Ludlow headed ‘Infectious Diseases-Small-Pox’, threatened dire punishment, including hard labour if these weren’t adhered to. (2)
The disease was no respecter of persons killing, Mary queen to William III, at 32 and nearly did the same for Elizabeth I in 1562. Charles I only succeeded after his older brother had died from smallpox in 1612.
Later Lord Macaulay described the disease as, ‘the most terrible of all the ministers of death’ and by the 17thc it had replaced the plague as the biggest cause of death. Josiah Wedgwood was to survive smallpox and went on to become the famous potter. Queen Victoria was the first to be inoculated.
When the British weren’t dying of smallpox, the ever presence of death is underlined by the diaries of Parson Woodforde recording that in 1783 Weston Longville was attacked by a sickness with the macabre nickname of Whirligousticon, in other words, Malaria, from East Anglia’s mosquito infested swamps.
It was an old superstition that if the fourth book of Homer’s Iliad was placed under the head of a patient suffering from quartan ague, occurring every fourth day, they would be cured. Where one acquired this learned book isn’t recorded!
In 1897 that it was discovered that the mosquito was the vector of malaria (mal air), as all disease was thought to be spread by bad air. The last Briton known to have died of the disease died on the Isle of Sheppey in 1952, when ‘marsh fever’ seems to die out in Britain. In 1933 British doctors were to isolate the virus, though its ability to mutate means it is difficult to fully control.
Many diseases come from abroad as in May 2009 (declared a pandemic), when Swine ‘Flu, which is transmitted to humans, came from Mexico; the 1957 ‘Flu epidemic came from Asia, and the Hong-Kong outbreak of 1969 killing nearly 3,000 in one week, was said to have originated where large amounts of pigs, chickens and ducks were able to transfer the virus to humans.
At Wentworth Castle, South Yorkshire a plain obelisk commemorates Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the Ambassador in Constantinople who was scarred with smallpox. She brought to England in 1720 the live serum method by which she had successfully inoculated her children, predating by over 70 years Jenner’s pamphlet on cowpox serum.
TB is now the world’s biggest killer with two million annually, and whilst Britain was on its way to eradicating the disease in the 1980s, numbers have grown here. At the beginning of the 20th century cases were running at 100,000 a year, by the 1950s this was down to 50,000 using antibiotics and vaccination.
In 2020 the Virus, Covid 19 spread from the far-east resulting in a pandemic with the effects still apparent a year later, but that’s to be another story.
(1) The sick person was to make a special confession…after which the priest shall absolve him;. Visitation of the Sick BCP 1662.
(2) (Shropshire Archives DA3/889/7).
Ref:
wellcomecollection.org.works. Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.
nationaltrust.co.uk/wentworth.
Vaccination Act 1853.
28th December 1694. Deadly Virus.
Smallpox is so called to distinguish it from the Great Pox or Syphilis. By the 17thc it had replaced plague as the biggest cause of death in Britain.(1)
Smallpox killed monarchs for as the historian Macaulay said: ‘The most terrible of all ministers of death struck Queen Mary’, referring to Mary II, (wife of King William III (of Orange), who died Today in 1694.
Prevention against the disease, was promoted by 18thc writer Lady Mary Montagu who having witnessed local ‘folk practice’ introduced inoculation against smallpox into England from Constantinople where her husband was Ambassador. (2)
It resulted in experimentation on Newgate prisoners and charity children, which proving to be effective, resulted in inoculation being taken up by the nobility.
1802 cartoon at the height of the Jenner controversy.
Then Dr. Edward Jenner finding that a Gloucestershire milkmaid subject to cowpox had never had smallpox, in 1796 inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with cowpox from a sore from Sarah Nelmes. On being inoculated with smallpox weeks later there was no reaction.(3)
However Sir Joseph Banks President of the Royal Society realizing that the discovery pre-empted scientific understanding of the disease refused to publish results.
Many physicians such as John Haygarth (1740- 1827) were working at a local level in Chester, where only a fraction of the population escaped smallpox.
He discovered with his work into fevers how to reduce smallpox mortality by concentrating on prevention and in 1778 helped found the Smallpox Society of Chester which advised on the then unpopular practice of inoculation, as a result mortality was reduced by 50%.
The 1840 Vaccine Act provided in effect the first free medical service in Britain, but remained highly contentious; Queen Victoria was the first Royal to be vaccinated.
Quarantine ships and isolation centres were located on the banks of the Thames and eventually an Imperial Vaccination League was inaugurated.
The 1853 compulsory vaccination law was often ignored, but the 1871 epidemic when deaths totalled 85,000, followed the next year with 77,000, rapidly changed the public mind with figures dropping dramatically to about a hundred at the century’s end.
In the next century smallpox was largely eradicated in Britain, though in 1962 there was a major outbreak in Yorkshire and the Welsh Rhondda Valley, after which the care-centres were burnt to the ground.
In 1979, The World Health Organisation announced the world-wide eradication of smallpox, less than 200 years after Jenner’s work.
(1a) The great potter Josiah Wedgwood survived the disease as a boy, but it killed Earl Waldegrave, who as a result had the shortest tenure of office as a Prime Minister.
(1b) Esther in Dickens’, Bleak House contracted the disease.
(2a) She recorded in a letter dated 1.4.1717. Her son was inoculated.
(2b) The Royal Society gathered differing accounts of inoculation from around the world and in 1717 variolation the practice of inoculation by using matter drawn from a smallpox pustule and inserting it under the skin of a healthy person, was introduced in Britain, though contagious people were rarely quarantined.
(3) 14th May 1796 date of inoculation.
Ref: wikipedia.org/smallpox/Pic Image.
NOTES:
In World War II there was research undertaken in Britain, to test the feasibility of producing a biological weapon using smallpox.
In 1978 a medical photographer died from infection whilst using a sample at Birmingham University.
18th September 1660. No respecter of Person: Smallpox.
‘The lost leader’: Prince Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester and youngest son of Charles I, was also known as Henry of Oatland.
Today the boy who might have been king died in 1660 of the smallpox. Oliver Cromwell had regarded Henry as a likely and popular constitutional monarch, especially as he was Protestant, but the Rump Parliament eventually decided for the Republican Commonwealth.(1)
Henry of Oatland: 8.7.1640-13.9.1660.
Charles I had only succeeded to the throne after his older brother had died from smallpox in 1612. If he had survived the course of British history would have changed dramatically.
The ravages of smallpox took its toll on the Stuarts, as apart from Henry of Oatland, his sister Mary Henrietta, first Princess Royal and mother of William III, fell victim in 1660. Both were buried at Westminster Abbey.
However two other children of Charles I, his daughter Henrietta and the future Charles II both survived the disease.(2)
Thus if Henry had been declared king by Cromwell, we might never have seen the reigns of brothers, ‘Old Rowley’ Charles II, and that calamitous period of James II, or the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of William III.
However, if he had lived, there is little doubt that Henry would have become king after the Catholic convert James II fled into exile.
The crown was offered to Mary Henrietta’s only son who became William III of England, (William II of Scotland).(3)
Smallpox with a fatality rate of 30% was to have a devastating effect on the Stuarts, as the rest of the population. Previously the Tudors had suffered, notably Queen Elizabeth, which might explain her heavy make-up to hide the scars.
(1) Henry was captured by the Parliamentarians but released 1652. He was made Duke of Gloucester in 1659. He was called Henry of Oatland, as he was born at Oatland Palace, Surrey.
(2) Mary Henrietta was the Princess of Orange having married the William II Prince of Orange.
(3) William III lost his father to smallpox, and also lost his Queen Mary aged 32.
Ref: englishmonarchs.co.uk/Image of Henry of Oatland.
Ref: Historical Dictionary of British monarchs. James Panton 2011.
14th May 1660. ‘Fashion a Fickle Jade.’
Today in 1660 Diarist, Samuel Pepys noted Dutch ladies of fashion wearing ‘black patches’. By August he’s pleased to see his wife with them.
The earliest mention of Face Patches is in 1653: ‘Our ladies have lately entertained a vain custom of spotting their faces out of an affectation of a mole to offset their beauty such as Venus had.’
Not surprisingly 17thc Puritans objected to the fashion for face-patches, as they introduced an abortive parliamentary bill, banning the ‘vice of painting and wearing black patches and immodest dress.’
Box for Patches and Rouge.
It was towards the end of the reign of Charles I in the mid 17thc, that saw the fashion for wearing patches to cover up facial flaws, a practice which developed into fashion statements and markers of wealth.
At that time the biggest killer was smallpox which even if it didn’t kill, left faces pock-marked. Many cosmetics then were dangerous as they often contained a lead base, which damaged the skin and caused serious health problems.
In the later reign of Queen Anne patches could denote political party affiliation: right forehead for the Whigs and on the left for the Tories.
The Baroque was the great age for cosmetics, after the Renaissance masculinity. Then the following Rococo Age of asymmetry, saw women as fragile, frivolous and coquettish, with the fashionable asymmetry of face, seen in the use of patches.
However much use was aesthetic, with patches on the face, neck and breast, and with it came the language of the patches. For instance above the lip it suggested coquetry; forehead suggested glamour, and the corner of the eye, passion.
Patch-pedlars did a good trade, and as common in those days, had a rhyming song to advertise their wares, often made of expensive fabrics such as silk and velvet; a gum adhesive stuck them to the face.
Their song of ,’Heer patches are of ev’ry cut for pimples and for scarrs’ (sic), said it all.
(1) Bulwer in Artificial Changelings 1653.
Ref: pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia.
Ref: studdmomnevertoldyou.com.blog.black-patches.
Ref: web.prm.ox.ac.uk/bodyart.
Ref: hair-and-make-up.com/Pic Images.
dailybritain.wordpress.com 