Health

Two hundred and forty-one known deaths in the town of Newcastle under Lyme are recorded in an Excel spread sheet. The record identifies age, occupation, address, rateable value, property owners name, death notice, gravestone and if left a will or not.  This is a tremendous document that for the student studying Victorian pandemics it would provide all the necessary information to a valued interpretation of the stats of the effects of such a damaging pandemic on the community and its economic problems it caused.This is presented on an Excel spreadsheet which can be used to extract many different statistics that may interest a student at College or University.

I discovered that it was only a matter of months that chloroform was demonstrated for its properties on humans in 1847 by Scottish obstetrician, Sir James Young Simpson.  The report stated that Simpson was the first to demonstrate chloroform, most likely to an audience of his peers. It was described as “this new and important anaesthetic agent – the peculiar powers of which produced insensibility to pain and used widely from the early 1850s.

However, my research proved that it was first discovered, not in Scotland as reported in medical papers but in Etruria at the Peoples Dispensary for the sick with a 15-year-old girl in 1848. Skill and care were required to differentiate between an effective dose (enough to make patient insensible during surgery). In fact, in December 1846 the Potteries Mercury which pre-dates the official published date of the discovery in 1847.

The title of the building over the entrance door reads – Parish Hospital of Stoke-upon-Trent 1842 and thousands must have passed its doors every day without a glance in that direction. Now the building is a listed Grade II to ensure its preservation as part of the original workhouse complex.

It was built because of the need for a hospital, not just for inmates of the workhouse, but also the people of Stoke who had nowhere to go for any form of treatment. It is now used as offices. An advertisement was placed for tenders in the Potteries Mercury to build a hospital, the first to be erected in the Borough of Stoke. The article gives a whole list of items require in the specification. During the first world war it was set apart as a military hospital and a number of photographs have survived of this time and included in the article.

Full details of its early life and the types of treatment offered is well worth a read and as such an interesting piece for the early years of hospitals.

Following the long struggle to overcome the serious stability of the Etruria buildings caused by industry with smoke and subsidence followed by an even longer struggle and different opinions a site at Hartshill was chosen belonging to the Mount estate and was subsequently purchased from Mr. Frederick Bishop, Solicitor of Hanley.
The foundation stone was laid on the 23rd of July 1860 by Sir John Heathcote, MP, the money being raised by a gift from the Prince Regent, out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and a legacy of £1,000 bequeathed by Mr John Rogers of the Watlands. The expenses of the additions were principally defrayed by a fancy bazaar held at Newcastle which realised the sum of £940 and with the additional receipts of an oratorio held in the new parish church of Stoke (opened in 1830) which yielded the sum of a further £800. Mr John Tomlinson of Cliffe Ville, at Hartshill displayed great zeal in establishing a firm start of this new Infirmary.
It was a time before the NHS and government funding, so as an ambitious product the finances depended upon the potteries folk to support this project on the principal it was a public hospital. Factory workers agreed to a few pence stopped from their wages, all churches had a special Infirmary Sunday with special services and the hope of more generous giving – all going to the hospital funs.
It also depended upon numerous benefactors who would pay the cost of the building of additional wards and operating theatres of which all would display the names of the benefactor responsible.
All this went on for nearly 100 years until the NHS took over the responsibility of all hospitals in July 1948. Since this date the hospital went from strength to strength both in its structure but also the medical services it provided. 11 x A4 pages and many photographs and nearly 5,000 words

The first century Saint Giles’ lived from about 650 to about 710 and was also known as Giles’ the Hermit and is the patron saint of lepers. This fact could in many ways have led to the possibility, that the church in Newcastle, dedicated to St. Giles’, was the founding body that created the hospital of St. Lloy only a mile south of the town situated at Trent Vale on the area of the A34. Sadly, there is no written confirmation of its connection because until 1807, St. Giles’ was little more than distant chapel of ease in the ancient parish of Stoke-upon-Trent and it’s that church of St Peter-ad-Vincula, which is recorded and not St. Giles’. Reecords state that it was the responsibility of the Parish of Stoke-upon-Trent, St Peter ad Vincula,

The location is now occupied by the University Hospital teaching buildings. It is here that once stood a hospital dating from around the middle of the 13th century. Documentary evidence of the hospital of St Lloy has been known for many years, but the exact location remained a mystery until 1985 when excavations to the west of the new hospital wards was being under taken. Here were two skeletons uncovered together with stone foundations and a few sherds of medieval pottery. No serious archaeological work was carried out and the site was covered over to enable a car park to be established. From this time, whatever secrets these finds held were to remain hidden for a further sixteen years.

Little written evidence no longer exists but what there is has been well studied and form the basis of this essay. Great read.

For children of measles, mumps and rubella in the middle ages and Victorian times caused considerable concern to medical professionals who rightly feared a major outbreak with terrifying consequences including the loss of life. Since 1796, when Edward Jenner an English country doctor introduced a vaccine for smallpox it has saved more lives worldwide than any other vaccine to date. However, in the case of measles in was not until 1963 that a vaccine became available to protect mainly children but also adults.

The use of historical data used in this article helps us to evaluate and understand this importance of vaccination today. It shows that every town in the potteries was affected by measles in epidemic proportions every few years during the 19^th century.