'The year Northampton became something of a ghost town and 665 people died'

Not wanting to be depressing or alarmist, but this week’s County Tale is, sadly, a slice of our local history. In 1638, Northampton suffered from an epidemic.

Not the plague, nor the spotted fever that had struck in earlier centuries and would strike again later, this time it was cholera.

Disease spread like wildfire in those days when no-one, not even physicians, had any understanding of hygiene and healthcare.

Folk in Northampton lived literally cheek by jowl and so it was only to be expected that, in many cases, if one person caught something nasty, then it was pretty certain that it would spread.

But cholera was slightly different. Plague was spread through flea-infested rats. Spotted fever – I presume it was smallpox, so condemned by Samuel Pepys – was highly contagious.

But Northamptonians contracted cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the bacterium, Vibrio cholerae.

It spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water. Without treatment, death

occurred within hours.

Contemporary letters reveal a little of the ignorance surrounding the cholera outbreak of 1638.

The Mayor of Northampton, William Collis, wrote reports giving the state of play to Sir Richard Lane, the Attorney General, who was also Recorder for Northampton.

Sir Richard would have been especially concerned, as his father was a yeoman in Courteenhall, where Sir Richard was born, and his mother’s family still lived in Harpole.

The mayor’s main concern was that fairs and markets presented serious dangers, clearly thinking the disease was ‘catching’.

“Our town butchers cannot be suffered to go into the country to buy provision for us and diverse country butchers are restrained from coming in,” even though in Northampton itself, certain tradesmen were given certificates showing they were clear of infection.

“This Corporation suffereth,” he went on, “markets are decayed, corn and provisions for food are scant, trade is ruined, labouring men cry out for work and the poore are in abundance.”

So, an appeal was made to The Justices of the Peace of the County of Northampton, pleading that at their next Quarter Sessions they would take effectual order to have supplies brought in from ‘safe areas’ to relieve the great suffering.

Northampton was in dire straits.

Isolation was a good first step. If you could get away to safety, you stood a chance of being all right. And many in Northampton did “fly abroad to country townes with their wares”.

The town was gradually evacuated. People were simply going to where there was clean, fresh water.

On May 1, 1638, Mayor Collis wrote: “All our highe streates from the North Gate to the South bridge and from the East gate to the West bridge and all the markit places are, thanks be to God, free and cleare from the infeccon,” though he lists many houses that were still “suspected” .

The occupants had been removed and the houses “carefullie shutt up, watched and looked unto”.

In that year, Northampton became something of a ghost town and 665 people died.