Cholera and Public Health Reform in Nineteenth-Century Wallasey Geoffrey Gill The public health crisis in Wallasey, 1851 On 16 June 1851 a number of Wallasey ratepayers petitioned the General Board of Health to request a local inquiry.1 The letter of petition was as follows: PUBLIC HEALTH ACT 1848 To the Honourable the Commissioners of the General Board of Health. My Lords and Gentlemen, We, the undersigned inhabitant householders in the township of Poulton-cum-Seacombe, in the Parish of Wallasey, and county of Chester, most respectfully and earnestly beg to call your attention to the inefficient state of the sewerage and drainage of our township in general, and the village of Seacombe in particular. We have to observe that all the drains and sewers from the houses and waterclosets of the village of Seacombe deposit their filthy contents upon the shore, the stench from which is not only highly offensive to the senses, but also extremely prejudicial to health. That before a certain embankment was raised by the trustees of the Birkenhead Docks, the tidal waters of the river Mersey removed all impurities; that the tide is now excluded, and that a cesspool is formed within the said embankment, which engenders malaria, and will in the coming hot season be a fruitful source of fever and disease to a neighbour­ hood already notorious for its unhealthiness. 1 This paper is adapted from work carried out at Chester College for an M.A. degree in Victorian Studies. I am very grateful for the help of Dr Roger Swift. Helen Gill and Rachel Bury also provided invaluable assistance, as did the staff at Birkenhead Central Library and Earlston Road Library, Wallasey. 58 Geoffrey Gill We have also to add, that the number of inhabitants rated to the relief of the poor in this one township of Poulton-cum-Seacombe is 430 of whom 120 have annexed their signatures to this petition. We therefore humbly hope that you will take this our petition into your consideration, and that you will appoint a superintending inspector to visit this locality, to inquire as to the sewers etc and drains etc of which we complain. (Signed) Edward Roberts BA, Incumbent of Seacombe, and 119 others.2 The General Board of Health, to which the petition was sent, had been set up in 1848 following the Public Health Act of the same year. The number of ratepayers signing the letter (120) was well above the minimum of thirty, or one tenth of the total ratepayers, required by the Act, and may be taken as signifying the strength of local feeling. Moreover, the 120 signatures included several of the twenty-one Wallasey improvement commissioners, who had been appointed following the 1845 Wallasey Improvement Act with a brief which included relieving exactly the problems outlined in their letter to the General Board.3 The document demonstrates considerable health concerns, particularly in relation to the ‘highly offensive’ stench (or miasma) from the polluted Seacombe shore. There is also more than a hint of political fall-out with the neighbouring town of Birkenhead in relation to dockland developments there which affected the tidal flow on the Seacombe shore. The petition led to a visit by Robert Rawlinson, a superintending inspector of the General Board of Health, who reported to the board in October 1851. Before looking in detail at Rawlinson’s findings and the aftermath of his report, it is worth tracing the antecedent events in Wallasey in relation to public health, in order to uncover what had led to this crisis in confidence. Wallasey: an ancient and isolated community Wallasey lies on the north-east corner of the Wirral peninsula, one of the most remote parts of Cheshire. The parish lies on relatively high ground, bordering the Irish Sea to the north and the river 2 R. Rawlinson, Report to the General Board of Health on a preliminary inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and supply of water, and the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of the township of Poulton-cum-Seacombe (London, 1851), pp. 5-6. Copy in Local History Archive at Earlston Road Library, Liscard, Wallasey; and also in The local reports to the General Board of Health, 1848-1857 (London, 1977), published on microfiche by Harvester Press. 3 Acts of Parliament and Provisional Orders related to Wallasey, 1809-1889 (Liverpool, 1889), pp. 144-57. Copy in Wirral Archives, BC/V/17. Cholera and Public Health in Wallasey 59 Mersey to the east. To the west the land fell to a marshy low-lying area of central north Wirral, which until coastal defences were built was frequently tidally flooded. The area, known as the north Wirral flats, is essentially an alluvial flood plain. To the south, Wallasey was bounded by a natural inlet of the river Mersey called the Wallasey Pool, into which a number of rivers drained, most notably the river Birket. The Wallasey Pool was tidal, and this meant that at high tide (the river Mersey has one of the highest tidal ranges in the country, about 30 feet from low to high tide), water would flow over the north Wirral flats towards the rising Wallasey Pool, and would meet at an area known as Bidston Moss (Fig. 1). These geographical considerations are important, as it can now be seen that Wallasey, at times depending on the tide, was almost an island, and even at low tide was an isolated and difficult place to approach. This explains its name, which includes as its final element the Old English word for an island.4 The parish of Wallasey included three townships, Liscard, Wal­ lasey, and Poulton cum Seacombe, whose scattered hamlets were separated by heath and farmland until the urban developments of the nineteenth century. A local rhyme reflects Wallasey’s old rural status, as well as its more regrettable associations with smuggling and wrecking: Wallasey for wreckers, Liscard for trees, Poulton for honest men and Seacombe for thieves.5 At the first national census of 1801 only 663 people lived in the parish of Wallasey, but throughout the nineteenth century the population rose steadily (Table 1). This was due to urbanization related to the growth of the Wallasey and Birkenhead docks, and also to Wallasey’s growing dormitory status for workers in Liver­ pool, greatly aided by the Mersey ferry services. By the early 1840s Wallasey had a population of over 6,000: significant by contemporary standards. Yet it appears to have been an unpoliced, dangerous, and isolated area, famous (or infamous) only for wrecking and smuggling activities (including apparently the 4 J. McN. Dodgson, The place-names of Cheshire (English Place-Name Society), IV, pp. 323-4- 5 N. E. Smith, Almost an island: the story of Wallasey (Wallasey, 1990), p. 16. F ig u re i Extract from Hunter’s Map of Wirral (1798), showing Wallasey Pool and the rivers draining into it, as well as the four main villages of Wallasey (Poulton, Seacombe, Liscard, and Wallasey). North to right. Cholera and Public Health in Wallasey 61 T a b le i Wallasey’s population in the nineteenth century Year Population 18 0 1 663 1 8 1 1 943 18 2 1 1,16 9 18 3 1 2.737 18 4 1 6,261 18 5 1 8,348 18 6 1 10 ,7 2 3 18 7 1 14,944 18 8 1 2 1,19 2 18 9 1 33>229 19 0 1 53,579 Source: E. C. Brown and P. C. Woods, The rise and progress of Wallasey (Birkenhead, 1929), p. 7. local clergy).6 Sanitary and health status at this time cannot be determined from official government sources, as Wallasey was not mentioned until Rawlinson’s inquiry. Chadwick’s survey of 1842, for example, gave Cheshire in general small consideration, and did not even mention Wallasey, or indeed anywhere on the Wirral peninsula.7 There are, however, other sources which can be used to investigate health and sanitation, and in particular the impact of cholera on the community. Health care in Wallasey: the 1832 cholera outbreak and beyond The provision of health care in Wallasey was poor throughout most of the nineteenth century. The earliest medical service, the Wallasey Dispensary, was a charitable out-patient service for the poor, started in 18 3 1 and sited in Demesne Street, Seacombe. The Seacombe Dispensary for Children, begun in Fell Street (very 6 E. C. Woods and P. C. Brown, The rise and progress of Wallasey (Birkenhead, 1929), p. 122. 7 E. R. Chadwick, Report on the sanitary conditions of the labouring population in Great Britain (London, 1842). 6 2 Geoffrey Gill close to Demesne Street) in 1867 by Mr E. G. Hammond of Egremont, was only a cottage. In i8 /r it moved to Demesne Street to combine with the Seacombe Cottage Hospital opened (as part of the Wallasey Dispensary) in 1869. These institutions were com­ bined as the Wallasey and Seacombe Cottage Hospitals and Wallasey Dispensary, and remained in being until 1900, when they were replaced by the Victoria Central Hospital (opened in 1901), more centrally situated in Liscard. This comprehensive hospital also took over the work of the Infectious Diseases Hospital (opened in 1885 on the same site).8 The Wallasey Dispensary was the only medical service available (apart from private doctors for those who could afford them) for much of the century, including during all four cholera epidemics. Moreover, a medical officer of health was not appointed for Wallasey until r873 (well after the r866 epidemic), though the question had been discussed since r 865 by the local board of health.