Publications
Typhoid in Worthing in 'Fever Year', 1893, by J. Virgoe, published August 2006 in The Local Historian (vol. 36, no. 3, article, pp.163-174) accessible at: British Library View Online
Abstract:This article is a case-study of a public health crisis which affected an ostensibly 'safe' and-according to its own publicity-notably healthy seaside resort in the late Victorian period. John Virgoe describes the outbreak, progress and impact of the epidemic of typhoid during the summer of 1893, and then goes on to consider its consequences for a town which depended so heavily on the visitor trade (its motto is 'Ex Terra Copiam E Mari Salutem': 'from the land, plenty, from the sea, health'). A substantial section of the discussion focuses on arguments about the responsibility for the outbreak, including the hotly-debated issue of polluted water supply. This was a particularly severe outbreak, with 186 deaths, and some 7.5 per cent of the population being affected, and yet despite two official and contradictory reports a definitive explanation of the origins of the epidemic was never provided. Virgoe demonstrates how vested interests played a part in 'shaping' the news coverage of the outbreak-the town council was desperate to play down the scale of the problem-and also shows the process (a combination of logical reasoning and guesswork) by which the medical investigations were carried out. He includes an assessment of the costs of the epidemic, financial and social, and concludes with consideration of the relative significance of this outbreak compared with other better-known events elsewhere.