Ring a Ring o' Rosies: The Plague of Suffolk
MOST RECENT POST - CRUELLA DE VIL - THE SUFFOLK VAMPIRE
A few weeks
ago, I wrote an article for Living in… Suffolk Coastal magazine on the
Black Death and its link to my home county of Suffolk.
I was thrilled
with how it turned out – this is the first longer-style article I pitched to
the editor which actually got approved to appear in the magazine, and as a
first proper contribution, I was really proud of it.
However, there
was a lot of information which I inevitably had to cut out. I’ve spent so much
time reading up on the plague in east Suffolk and learning about the people who
fought it, that it was actually really hard deciding which pieces of the story
wouldn’t get told. So, I’ve decided to share everything I discovered about the
plague story here, for anyone who read the article and became just as hooked on
this story as I did.
TL;DR – the last time there were cases of the plague in Britain, it was in my home county of Suffolk.
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| My article in Living In... Suffolk Coastal magazine |
What is the Plague?
‘Plague’ sounds
like a generic term, but it actually refers to a very specific disease caused
by the Yersinia pestis, a type of bacteria carried by rat fleas. When
humans are infected with these bacteria, they develop the plague in one of
three forms:
Bubonic
plague – the most common of the three, caused when a person is bitten by an
infected flea. Sufferers experience a dangerously high fever, vomiting, and
aches in their heads and bodies. The lymph nodes become painful and swollen,
resulting in pus-filled swellings (‘buboes’) in the neck and groin. In most cases, the victim died within three
to five days of displaying symptoms. When people mention the Black Death, this
is what they are talking about.
Pneumonic
plague – when the lungs are infected with the bacteria from breathing in
air-born droplets from another infected person or animal. In addition to the
symptoms of the bubonic plague, those infected will experience chest pains,
shortness of breath and cough up blood in their saliva.
Septicemic
plague – the rarest and most deadly of the three forms, when the bacteria
infects the sufferer’s bloodstream. It can be contracted from fleabites, or
simply from handling an infected animal. When left untreated for more than 24
hours, even today, the disease will almost always prove fatal. In 2015, a sixteen-year-old
boy named Taylor Gaes died after contracting this form of plague from an
infected rodent on his family’s rural property in Colorado.
How Did it Get Here?
It’s difficult
to make accurate estimates about the Middle Ages, because records of things
like population numbers, death tolls and precise dates were only kept
sporadically. However, many people believe that the plague arrived in Europe in
1347 when a ship docked in Sicily, having travelled from Crimea. By all
accounts, it was a nightmarish scene: the ship was teeming with the corpses of
the crew. The sailors still living, who staggered out to meet the gathering
crowds, were close to death themselves, covered in angry, weeping boils.
The citizens of
Italy were horrified, and the authorities attempted to prevent more ‘Death
Ships’ (as they came to be known) from docking in the country, but it was too
late; Pandora’s box had been opened, and the plague would engulf Europe in the
centuries to come.
The Plague in England
In Britain, the
disease is often thought to have peaked during the Great Plague of London
(1665-6), which killed an incredible 15% of its citizens – at least. After this
epidemic, the death toll in England gradually began decreasing. Because of
this, some people assume that it was wiped out by the Great Fire of London in
September of 1666. Others attribute the plague’s end to the displacement of the
black rat (rattus rattus) in England by the larger brown rat (rattus
norvegicus), which does not carry plague bacteria and prefers to live
farther away from humans. In all likelihood, both of these theories are false;
the disease is now believed to have been losing its potency by 1666, much aided
by quarantine procedures and the improvement of hygiene practices.
This period
marked a turning point, after which plague cases became less and less frequent,
until Britain was largely plague-free. There was an outbreak in Glasgow in
1900, in which 16 people died. However, the last recorded presence of plague
was in Suffolk, when five cases were observed between 1906 and 1918.
The Chapman-Goodall Family: 1910
I began my
article with the Chapman-Goodall case. The year was 1910, meaning that the
plague had already been in the area for four years prior; however, they were
the first to be diagnosed, and the medical professionals therefore worked
backwards from this point.
The family
lived between Freston and Holbrook in a collection of cottages inhabited by the
families of farmworkers and manual labourers. The Chapman-Goodalls lived in the
middle part of a building which had been divided into three homes. There was
Mr. Chapman, a farm worker, his wife Mrs. Chapman, who had either been divorced
or widowed, (given the period, I’m assuming widowed) and her four children from
her first marriage.
Nine-year-old
Annie Goodall was the first to show symptoms. She fell ill on September 13th;
she died on September 16th. The very day after her funeral, her mother began to
display the same symptoms. She died herself on September 23rd. Within the
week, her husband was dead, and so was their kindly neighbour Mrs Parker, who
had valiantly tried to nurse her friend Mrs Chapman back to health.
I can’t be sure
how long the Chapmans were married; Annie was nine, and the third of four
children, so I’d estimate that they can’t have had more than five years
together. I also can’t be sure what happened to Annie’s siblings, whose first
names are omitted from the medical journal articles I have read. They were
temporarily isolated at Tattingstone workhouse in the immediate aftermath of
their mother’s death (the workhouse having been reopened for that purpose), but
whether they were taken in by relatives or became wards of the state, I don’t
know.
The Doctors
Here, I’d like
to take a step back and introduce you to the medical professionals at the
centre of this story.
The first is Dr
Carey, a local GP who practised in the area of the Shotely peninsula. He was
called out to the Chapmans when Annie became ill and oversaw all three of their
deaths. He was flummoxed by Annie’s symptoms at first but began to suspect
plague when her mother and stepfather fell sick with the exact same symptoms.
It is not clear why this diagnosis occurred to him, since it had been so long
since any cases had been observed in England, and the symptoms of vomiting,
headaches, coughing and shortness of breath could have been attributed to many
other illnesses. Possibly the swiftness of Annie’s death aroused his
suspicions. He requested the expertise of Dr Brown to confirm his diagnosis.
In every report
I have read, Dr Brown is referred to as ‘a physician from Ipswich,’ meaning he
would have had a higher level of training than Dr Carey, but no more detail is
given regarding his specific role within the community. On his first visit, he
arrived on the day of Mrs Chapman's death and took samples of her sputum (coughed
up mucus). He returned when her husband and Mrs Parker were in the final throws
of their illness and took a syringeful of blood from Mr Chapman and some bloody
fluid from Mrs Parker by puncturing her lung. These specimens he passed on to Dr
Heath.
Dr Llewellyn
Heath was the area’s local bacteriologist, meaning he would have been the
person best qualified to identify the Yersinia pestis. From the
specimens collected by Dr Brown, he managed to grow plague bacteria, meaning
the Chapmans had indeed died of pneumonic plague.
From here, Dr
Brown acted fast. He identified the bacteria on September 29th and
immediately informed Dr Brown and Dr Sleigh, the Medical Officer of Health of
the Rural District of Samford. On the 30th, he travelled to Cambridge to
present his findings to Professor Sims Woodhead, explaining to Dr Brown that he
needed the backing of a ‘big name.’ I deduce from this that a diagnosis of
plague in the 20th century would have seemed so preposterous that he imagined
his own clinical skill would be called into question. The professor, however,
corroborated his findings. The same evening, Dr Heath wired a telegram to Dr
Brown, warning him to ‘isolate all contacts.’ This, of course, was how the
Chapman children came to be removed to Tattingstone workhouse.
The Local
Government Board Inspector, Dr Timbrell Bulstrode, began an investigation into
the presence of plague in East Suffolk on Tuesday, October 4th. A rat and a
hare were shot near Freston and were found to be carrying plague bacteria,
proving Dr Bulstrode’s theory that the disease was lingering in the area, and
the Chapman case in all likelihood was not a one off. Suddenly, instances of
animal infection were being reported from all over Suffolk and Essex – a cat in
Stutton and a ferret in Woodbridge to name a few. Dr Bulstrode was also able to
identify two outbreaks of a mystery illness in the past four years, which had
been responsible for several deaths. In hindsight, concluded Dr Bulstrode,
these people had died of the plague.
The Churches and Goodchilds: 1906-7
The
first of these outbreaks happened in a collection of cottages in the land
between Shotely and Chelmondiston. In 1906, a Mrs Ann Church fell sick with
pneumonia. Her death followed the established pattern observed in the deaths of
the Chapmans. She suffered shortness of breath hacking cough and high
temperature typical of pneumonia sufferers, and died within three days of
displaying symptoms, on December 12th. She was nursed by her two daughters, a
Mrs Edith Radcliffe, who died herself a week after her mother, and a Miss Emily
Church, who recovered and went on to marry and raise a family of her own. Mrs
Church’s daughters were in turn nursed by a neighbour, Mrs Goodchild, who
contracted the disease and died on Boxing Day, soon followed by her husband
William Senior, her son, William Junior, and mother, who had come to the area
to nurse her (a medical journal article names Mrs Goodchild’s mother as Mrs
Woods; however, a blogpost from the grandson-in-law of her next-door-neighbour
names her as Mrs Sophia Welham. I’m more inclined to accept this account; if my
granny’s neighbours died of plague, I know she wouldn’t forget their names).
Herbert, another son of Mrs Goodchild’s, also fell sick, but recovered. He was
only nine, and it is unclear what fate befell him.
The Rouses: 1909-10
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| From Ray Howlett's book, The Enigma That Is Trimley |
The second case
was the one I wrote about in the most detail in my article, because it occurred
a literal stone’s throw away from where I live, in Trimley St Martin.
This was the
case of the Rouse family, who consisted of Mr John Rouse, his wife (in a sign
of the times, none of the married women are named in the reports I’ve read) and
five children, Honora, Carrie, Alice, Willie and John. John was the youngest
child, aged six, while eighteen-year-old Honora was the eldest. It seems that she’d moved
back in with her parents in the summer of 1909, although it is unclear as to why
she’d moved away in the first place. It was December of that year that plague
came for the Rouses.
Without
repeating myself from my article in Living In… the disease tore through
the whole family in a few weeks, in much the same fashion as before. What was
different, however, was that the Rouses suffered bubonic plague, meaning they
had contracted it from flea bites. This makes sense; their home was surrounded
by farming fields and was also within spitting distance of the river Orwell,
meaning it was highly likely that there were rats living close by. They were
also extremely poor. The cottage is said to have been far too small to
accommodate seven people, and was infested with fleas. Mr Rouse maintained that
the disease came after he shot a rabbit and took it home for the family’s
dinner. This could well have been the case if the rabbit was carrying plague
bacteria, while the rumour mill deduced from Mr Rouse’s story that the family
had contracted food poisoning from their rabbit pie. What led Dr Bulstrode to
conclude with absolute certainty that they had died of the plague came from the
statement made by Honora Rouse at the family’s inquest.
The Rouses’
deaths were deemed suspicious enough to warrant an investigation by their GP,
Dr Hart. The disease had been so rapid, so aggressive and so cruel that in his
mind, the only explanation was that they had been poisoned. Much of the information
about the Rouses’ illness and deaths comes from the statement given by Honora.
She told the coroner how she and her family developed ‘knots’ in their necks
and thighs and suffered diarrhoea and vomiting until they became weak and delirious.
In hindsight, Dr Bulstrode knew that these ‘knots’ were in fact buboes, classic
signs of the Black Death that had ravaged the country centuries before.
It was Honora
who discovered her mother’s body when she tiptoed up to her bedroom to check on
her. Honora was then left to nurse her brothers and sisters, contracting the
disease herself in the process. Both Carrie and Alice died in early January of
1910. On Monday, January 10th, Mr Rouse was taken to Ipswich hospital. The next
day, his two sons were removed to Barham Workhouse. Unlike Mrs Chapman’s
children, however, this was not to simply keep them isolated, as Barham was
still a functioning workhouse at this point. It was also said to be one of the
meanest places in England, with regular riots taking place within its walls as
the inmates begged to be given sufficient food. It was more a prison than a
workhouse and said to be the inspiration behind the bleak children’s workhouse
in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. It is of little wonder that the sickly
Willie Rouse lasted just four days under their callous care.
This left
Honora alone in the house, although I am not sure why she wouldn’t have been
forced to accompany her brothers, since they surely would not have gone of
their own volition. She became sick on January 22nd and joined her father at
Ipswich hospital. Willie died, but Honora, John and their father recovered,
leaving this family of seven down to three. Mr Rouse relocated to Woodbridge,
presumably taking Honora and six-year-old John with him. Honora went on to
marry a Mr Hubbard, and hopefully found happiness with him.
Sailor Buck: 1911
From here on in, the authorities were
keeping a sharp lookout for cases of the plague and identified this bizarre
case in October of 1911. Sailor Buck worked at the Naval Barracks in Shotley.
He caught a rabbit on Ipswich road – less than a mile from where the Chapmans
lived in Freston. Supposedly, he contracted the disease while cleaning
the rabbit through a small cut on his index finger, an unusual way of contracting
plague. I don’t have the medical knowledge to explain why he did not develop
septicemic plague; if he had, he would almost certainly have died. As it was,
he remained in a critical condition for a full three months: feverish, his
irises inflamed and weeping abscesses growing in his neck. Miraculously, he
recovered and lived to be 76. However, he was left almost completely blind in
both eyes, and it seems that he was never able to come to terms with this
disability. The medical journal article rather unsympathetically recounts how
he remained in a ‘helpless’ state, making ‘no effort’ to regain control over
his life.
The Erwarton Neighbours: 1918
Just when it
seemed that the plague had vanished, there occurred another two deaths in
summer of 1918. About a mile from the Shotley Barracks, a Mrs Annie Bugg suddenly
developed pneumonia, and died a few days later on June 18th. At some point
whilst she was infectious, she had been visited by her next-door-neighbour, Mrs Gertrude Garrod, who also fell sick. Mrs Garrod was attended by her GP, Dr Carey, who
immediately recognised her symptoms: she was coughing up blood, running a fever
and deteriorating at the same rapid pace which had done for the Chapmans. He
raised the alarm, and sent samples to Captain Cade, a bacteriologist for the
Eastern Command of the British Army. His diagnosis was confirmed, and the
procedure of eight years previously was followed. Tattingstone workhouse was
again reopened to isolate all contacts, and the bedding and clothes of the two
neighbours were burnt. Mrs Garrod's gravestone can be found in Erwarton churchyard.
The End
This
is the last recorded case of plague in Britain. As Pip Wright explains in his
addendum to my article, diseases can lose their potency over time, which goes
some way towards explaining why the plague did not envelop the county, or even
the country, à la Covid-19.
However, as has
been demonstrated, the disease still had enough virulence left in it to claim
lives if it was not stamped out quickly. The speed with which Dr Carey, Dr
Brown, Dr Heath and Dr Bulstrode acted therefore undoubtedly played an important
role in preventing its spread.
Equally
important was the increased vigilance of locals in laying down rat poison. The
Samford Rural District Council (of which Dr Sleigh was the Medical Officer of
Health) began distributing leaflets, encouraging farmers to kill rats on their
land, and were met with many grumblers who felt that the local authorities
ought to stump up some money to pay for extra rat poison, if there was such a
problem with vermin in the area. The Reverend Marmaduke Washington of Holbrook wrote
a letter which appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times, expressing
frustration at the lack of tangible support from the council in preventing
further plague outbreaks – proving that locals were aware of how the Chapmans
had died, although local historian Ray Howlett speculates that in the case of
the Rouses, the theory of food poisoning may have been ‘put about,’ presumably
to prevent outright panic.
I find it oddly
comforting to think that even as Suffolk residents were at the centre of a
crisis with disastrous implications, there were still people more concerned
that they weren’t going to be left out of pocket. We complain about hand
sanitizers being too expensive; they quibbled over the cost of rat poison. Life
didn’t stop for them, just as it hasn’t stopped for us.
I hope you
enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed learning about all the people
who were affected by the plague of Suffolk. If you know what happened to anyone
mentioned, I’d love to hear about it.
SOURCES:
Information about all people named within this post comes primarily
from:
David Van Zwanenberg (1970) ‘The Last Epidemic of Plague in England?
Suffolk 1906-1918’, Medical History, 14(1) pp. 63-74. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/medical-history/article/last-epidemic-of-plague-in-england-suffolk-19061918/5E5C121F07307A7D8C467B82D662903C
Dorothy and John Black (2000) ‘Plague in East Suffolk 1906-1918’, Journal
of the Royal Society of Medicine, 93, pp. 540-543. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014107680009301014
Brian Pearson (2015) ‘Plague Next Door!’, WordPress, 28 July.
Available at: https://brianpearsblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/plague-next-door/
Ray Howlett (1980) The Enigma That Is Trimley. Essex: Colne Valley
Printers
(Ray was passionate about local history, particularly the Trimley
villages. He compiled many booklets on village life, one of which remembers the
plague outbreak of Trimley St Martin. Thank you to my granny for keeping them
safe for all these years!)
The Plague –
History.com
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death
Science Direct
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/symptoms/index.html
The World Health Organisation
Barahm Workhouse –
Peter Higgenbotham’s website provides comprehensive records for workhouses
in Britain and several other countries besides. Here is the page for the
workhouse built at Barham, with information on the riots which took place over
the years:
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Bosmere/
One man’s quest to trace the remains of the chapel at Barham led him to
encounter some rather too friendly locals:
http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/barhamworkhouse.htm
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