At the end of September 1893, Lanarkshire was counting the cost of a significant outbreak of typhoid. The ‘fever’ had broken out in a number of villages and towns, and Blantyre didn’t escape it.
In September, numbers were growing, with 39 new cases reported that month alone, higher than Cambuslang and neighbouring Bothwell! The outbreak was centred around the unsanitary conditions of the Village, which in recent years had deteriorated in its cleanliness and maintenance.
As doctors struggled to cope, an investigation got underway. It was found that houses in the old quadrangle at the Blantyre Works Village were overcrowded, the sudden reuse of drawing water from an old well which had previously been condemned and the general unsatisfactory conditions of drains and houses in general. There was evidence of slopping out into the streets, this foul mess getting its way into the ground, through to the water table, which no doubt was being drawn back up later in wells.
By the end of October 1893, an arrangement was made by sanitary inspectors to again close the well, this time pointing out its dangers to residents, at the low point near Shuttle Row.
An order from the County Council Sanitary authorities was given to Mr James Hunt, factor of houses at the Low Blantyre’s Village. This instructed certain improvements to be immediately made estimated to cost a significant £300 (about £60,000 in today’s money). This included the removal of open ash pits immediately next to dwellings, tidying up the centre of the square, covering external open drains and the conversion of single homes into a room and kitchen, improving ventilation and reducing the number of 4 tenants to one house to only 2.
The overcrowding was to be addressed following the improvements being made. Likely only a temporary measure, we know these homes continued to be overcrowded and were condemned in the first decade of the 1900s.
It’s known dozens of people of all ages died from Typhoid in Blantyre during 1893. AI imagines the scene at the water pump.
