Health problems have plagued county in the past
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Thurso’s Heritage by a Thirsa Loon
This month I thought I would look at the interlinked subjects of ill health and famine. Until recent times, cases of widespread ill health in the county were usually down to the likes of colds and flus.
Though step back in time, and the county had outbreaks of other health problems. With the lack of medical knowledge, mortality was not as it is today. Often, healers stepped in using ‘old wives tales’ to alleviate illnesses. There were undoubtedly some methods that worked while others were pointless.
Problems due to poor weather or crop disease also brought health issues. Illnesses such as typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis, the “flux” (dysentery), “chin-cough” (whooping-cough) and “ague” (possibly malaria) were common during the 1600s.
Thurso was a busy port, exporting beef, pork, fish, meal and grain. However, along with the rest of Caithness, it suffered from brutal famines in 1634 and 1671. To ease the suffering, it was often down to the local laird or the church, but their help was not as charitable as one would hope.
In 1699, the Thurso Kirk Session scrutinised the poor who applied for relief about their knowledge and fear of God before any distribution was considered. Two months later, they paid 10 shillings to make graves for the ‘poor famished people’.
The suggestion of famine or hard times at least appears in the second half of the 18th century. When Robert Forbes, the Bishop of Brechin, visited Caithness in 1762, he wrote: “I have been advised to take a dyed loaf [a kind of sponge cake] or some good bread along with me when entering into Caithness, being so poor and despicable a County that I could have no good thing to eat in it.”
While water from a river or a stream sparkling in the sun may look inviting, who knows what was being dumped in it further upstream. Early water supplies were often unhealthy with a range of bacteria.
Spread through contaminated water and food contaminated with faeces would see cholera outbreaks. In 1831, a vast cholera epidemic broke out across Europe, reaching Glasgow and Edinburgh the following year and then into Caithness. Out of the 96 deaths in Caithness, 26 were from Thurso.
Some households were lucky to have their own supply from a private well, which was still not hygienic. For those who did not have access to a private well, water came from public wells. The Meadow Well in Manson’s Lane is the best known of these.
For those who were not fit enough, they hired water carriers to collect for a moderate fee. Some of these required a watchful eye. If the river was the shortest route, then some crafty characters would fill up the pails and buckets from there rather than ‘good Meadow Well water’.
Thurso Surgeon John Williamson, 2nd Battalion of the Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles, mentioned in December 1796 an epidemic of confluent smallpox throughout the county. One in every four people in Thurso succumbed to the disease.
Over nine months, he carried out a plan to vaccinate as many people as he could. Although he treated 645 people during this period, there were reservations because of religious prejudice against inoculation.
The idea of prejudices against lifesaving vaccinations would repeat itself, though in much more modern times.
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