Bilston Cholera Epidemic 1832

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The most interesting piece of contemporary evidence was written the year after the epidemic by the Reverend William Leigh, the Vicar of Bilston at the time of the outbreak. He calls his book 'An Authentic Narrative of the Melancholy Occurrences at Bilston during the Awful Visitation in that Town by Cholera in the Months of August.and September 1832.'

His narrative is very detailed and contains letters written and received by Leigh to and from the Board of Health. He has this to say - with regard to the start of the epidemics. Elizabeth Dawson was attacked between 10 and 11 o'clock on the night of August 3rd with a sudden relaxation of the bowels. Early the next morning the husband, William Dawson, set off for Redditch for his wife's mother, Mary Allen, to nurse her. She came back with him on the 5th in the evening but, about a mile from Bilston, hearing that Elizabeth Dawson was dead and buried, they went back to Sedgley, to the house of a friend named White. On the 8th they came back to Dawson's house. Mary Allen slept that night in the same sheets in which Elizabeth Dawson had died of cholera. Two to three days after, both the husband and his mother-in-law were attacked and taken to the Cholera Hospital; he recovered, she perished on the 12th. In the same house died on the 9th of September, Maria,daughter of William Dawson, aged 17 months. Dawson is a labourer. Between his house and another inhabited by a widow and four children, there was a pig-sty at that time in a most offensive condition. On the 6th of September
William Smith, 18, a puddler, and son of the widow, perished On the 29th August in the Independent Meeting House. During worship George Cartwright was attacked and taken home by a member of the congregation, aged 57 he had the
care of a weighing machine in a colliery, he later died.

Leigh also comments on the state of the town after nearly three weeks of epidemic...

On the 22nd the condition of Bilston had become frightful; the pestilence was literally sweeping everything before it; neither age nor sex nor station escaping. To describe the consternation of the people is impossible. Many Factories are closed and business is completely at a standstill. Women are seen in a state of distraction running in all directions for medical help for their dying husbands. The hearse was carrying the dead to the grave without intermission. The inhabitants who possessed the means quit their homes and fled to some purer atmosphere. At length I sank under it. Overcome by bodily exertion and worn out with mental anxiety for my flock.