Epidemics and pandemics (1): Cholera and Sheffield

Sheffield's Cholera Monument stands above the railway station ("Sheffield Midland", as some signs and things still call it).   The foundation stone was put in place in December 1834 by James Montgomery, the poet, and the monument completed in April 1835.    There it stayed till it was damaged in a storm in the 1990s.  It was put up again, completed in 2006.

A board by the monument records that 402 people died, and were buried in the "grounds" where the monument stands.

And that the "total number of persons attacked by this disease" was 1347.

Sheffield City Libraries have a research guide, with information about the epidemic and a long list of sources, published and unpublished.

A paper read to the Section of the History of Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine and published in their Proceedings in 1935 discusses the outbreak in Yorkshire.     The table on p.608 records 1355 cases, and earlier in the article the figure of 402 deaths is mentioned.   This was the second highest number of deaths in any town in Yorkshire, Leeds having more (702).

What was the population of Sheffield in 1832?   According to A vision of Britain through time (1) the population of Sheffield in the 1831 census was 111851.    402 deaths, assuming everyone was a member of that population, equates to a death rate of 359.4 per 100000 (2).

John Snow's work with the water pump did not take place until 1854.   What was known in 1832?   Some of the medical literature from 1832 is available in PubMed Central:

A supplement to the Edinburgh Medical Surgical Journal, February 1832

From the Medical Chirurgical Review, January 1832, an article on epidemic cholera, followed by a review of other literature, and from April 1832,  an article about pamphlets.  

(1) GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, Sheffield District through time | Population Statistics | Total Population, A Vision of Britain through Time.   Available at: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10076882/cube/TOT_POP (Accessed 2nd February 2021)

(2) As of 1600 UK time on 2nd February 2021, there had been 990 deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID test, 1014 deaths with COVID named on the death certificate.   Using the figure of 575400 for the population of Sheffield in mid-2016, this equates to 172.1/100000 or 176.2/100000 respectively.

Grinders' disease

What is the connection between the 1945 film Brief Encounter and Sheffield?   Not the setting, or the destination of any of the trains (although there are signs for trains to Skipton and Bradford).  But the interests of Dr. Harvey, the male character played by Trevor Howard.   There is a scene where he talks about pneumoconiosis, and mentions that it can be caused by metal dust.

And this is grinders' disease, common among Sheffield grinders.  Sheffield City Morris dance to a song about the Sheffield grinder, and a bit of further research uncovers this song, sung here by Roy Bailey. 

At what is now Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, grinders ground scythe blades, using water powered wheels.  The blades were exported worldwide.  There is information at Kelham Island Museum as well about the grinders, many of whom ground cutlery blades.  One of the hazards was that the grinding stone would break and the grinder be injured by the pieces flying off.  This is why health and safety is important, to prevent this sort of thing happening! Another hazard was the dust.  Bailey's song records the thought that 32 was old for a grinder.  Sheffield is built on metal related industries, but the impact of these industries on the people who worked in them is quite thought provoking.  Working with hot metal and working to shape it were and are hazardous pursuits.

Searching PubMed for the phrase "grinder* disease" gives you a message that the quoted phrase is not found (although see below), but it does then find more than 80 references mentioning both words.  Some are about diseases caused by vibration, but the most recent are from July 2014, one about silicosis in agate workers in Iran and one about "cobalt asthma" in valve grinders in the English West Midlands.   The last item in the list is titled "Contributions towards the pathology of grinders' disease of the lungs", from the Provincial Medical Journal of 1843, by J.C. Waterhouse of Sheffield.   This quotes earlier work about the disease, including work that provides figures that back up Roy Bailey's song's observations about how long grinders live for.  Waterhouse's article is in PubMed Central.

A search of PubMed for sheffield grinder* turns up a series of five articles by John Charles Hall, in the British Medical Journal for 1857, about the diseases of the Sheffield grinder.   These articles were themselves the first in a series about "Diseases of special occupations" and are also in PubMed Central.

Steel City Science also has a piece about the issue.  There is much more about Hall in Plarr's Lives of the Fellows (of the Royal College of Surgeons of England), 

That was indeed a brief encounter with grinder's disease!

But it is not over yet.  Here is a photo taken in September 2015 at Shepherd's Wheel, on the Porter Brook in Sheffield.  This grinding wheel was reconstructed and is now open at weekends.  Like workers in the 19th century, no protective clothing, but unlike them, the demonstration lasted seconds, enough to show how it was done and how loud it was, another thing that affected grinders, perhaps.