This terrace of housing in Brackley Road is a monument to the cholera outbreak that descended on Towcester in 1854. The outbreak was first reported in the August 1854 and is said to have started at the Plank Houses. Within a month there were 52 dead – 2% of the population and several hundred had been affected by the disease. On one day there were five funerals, four of them fathers and heads of households. By the end of the outbreak 72 had died in Towcester. It was believed that the cholera was carried in the ‘miasma’ from drains, a view soon to be overturned by John Snow checking the spread of Cholera in Soho by removing a pump handle and proving it was a water born disease. A survey of Towcester by the Board of Health revealed that in the lower part of the town there were 60 cottages without privies and there were cess pits that had not been emptied for over 18 months. Lord Southampton, the Duke of Grafton , went to the poorest area of the town to see the conditions and was met by apprehensive inhabitants who wanted area of the town destroyed by fire to eradicate the disease. He personally set about clearing the worst slums of the straw beds and furniture he thought might be infected and burning it. Water was forced through the drains to clear them out and cottages in the affected areas lime-washed. If the disease could be caught early it was treatable by doctors but if left until it had fully developed it was usually fatal. The Old Bell Inn (now demolished) was turned into a temporary hospital for the reception of extreme cases but there was a great difficulty in finding efficient nurses. Families tried various modes of treatment to avoid the disease such as taking small doses of castor oil every half hour, taking “Dr. Coffins Anticholera Powder “ which was available at 6d per ounce from J. Bates, bookseller in Bridge St, Northampton or Dicey & Co’s “True Daffy’s Elexir” at 2/- per bottle! Although it was known what was needed to be done in the way of draining the lower part of the town there was the question of who should pay. It could not come out of the Poor Rate and a special meeting was held proposing an Act of Parliament but was only attended by 10 ratepayers – insufficient to take it forward. Eventually new wells were sunk which were of assistance. Robert Webb Watkins, the local doctor, spoke to Earl of Pomfret about the cholera and the state of the cottages in the lower part of the town. The Earl resolved to build to build a dozen new cottages in the upper part of the town and pull down the wretched dilapidated cottages around the churchyard but had not the finance to accomplish it. Watkins mentioned this to Mr Ridgway of Elm Lodge who offered to build the cottages if Lord Pomfret provided the land. This was agreed and Ridgway Terrace was built. By the time of his death Ridgway had erected about 50 houses in the town to improve the living conditions of the lower classes.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 08:49:49 +0000
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