THE cholera epidemic of 1832 hit Newlyn like a slap in the face.The wave of mortality engulfed Newlyn and to a lesser extent Penzance, although spared Marazion and Mousehole.
It began in the autumn of 1832 and in 16 weeks carried away about 100 souls.
'Contagion'
How it started and ended is guesswork. Tradition says the 'contagion' came by boat from Ireland via infected clothes.
Modern medicine would suggest this is unlikely, but it is quite possible that the epidemic was transported overland by an infected traveller from Exeter, which in 1832 was only about a day's coach journey away.
There was an enormous outbreak of cholera in Exeter that year, preceding the start of events in Newlyn by several weeks. The disease petered out that November and it is possible that the onset of colder weather destroyed it. Modern bacteriological knowledge would support that view.
The 1832 epidemic affected many parts of the county and Newlyn was the worst affected town in Cornwall in terms of population size.
Penzance, Hayle and Padstow also fared badly. About 300 cholera deaths were recorded for the whole of Cornwall, of which about a half came from Newlyn and Penzance.
In 1832, cholera appeared as a completely new disease in Great Britain. There was a theory called the miasma theory, that bad air carried many diseases and when cholera arrived it was readily assumed that it fitted into this category.
Another 17 years elapsed before John Snow, a young London GP, working in Soho, produced very strong evidence to show that cholera was, in fact, mainly a water-borne disease. His closure of the Broad Street water pump is now a famous legend in medical history, an action which led to a dramatic fall in the cholera deaths of that locality.
Snow's discovery was met with contradiction from some and it was not until 34 years later that the German Robert Koch isolated the bacterium, the vibriocholerae, from the faeces of an infected patient to provide the definitive proof.
Certification
Sadly Snow did not live to see his ideas vindicated, for he died of a brain haemorrhage a few years after his important discovery. He was only 45.
It is often stated that about 100 Newlyn people died from cholera that fateful year. Although death certification, as we know it, had not yet been introduced in 1832, it seems likely that this number is not an exaggeration.
Possibly the figure was even higher, because people weakened by other illnesses or by old age might have succumbed without it being labelled as cholera.
In any case, for confirmation, we have the Paul Church burial records.
Newlyn in those days was divided into two parts; Newlyn town, centred around St Peter's Hill and Street-an-Nowan, centred around Farmer's Meadow and Jack Lane. Both parts were in the Parish of Paul.
The church lists the names of more than 90 Newlyn victims. In addition, there were people living in the Tolcarne area, east of the river Coombe. They were in the Parish of Madron and their deaths would not, presumably, be listed in Paul.
Perhaps some people fled from Newlyn, then developed cholera and died in other localities. Their deaths, too, would not be registered in Paul.
Street-an-Nowan could have been the centre of the epidemic with Newlyn town the epicentre.
Fortunately, after 1832, Newlyn never had another cholera epidemic.
The townspeople must have been very frightened when cholera arrived in their midst. Although the majority of local people could not read or write at that time, they would have been aware of the epidemics taking place in cities 'up-country' and word of mouth reports would have told them of the panic and fear overwhelming the country. Contemporary newspapers mentioned cholera much more frequently that any other illness.
Towards the end of the Victorian era, historians were even speaking of it as the most feared disease of the century.
Cholera did seem more prevalent in poor and overcrowded sectors of society but apart from that trend it struck indiscriminately.
Dehydration
The onset of the disease was sudden, with muscle cramps, vomiting and intense diarrhoea. The disease was almost always fatal and killed the victim by dehydration. a duration of two days' illness followed by death was probably the average pattern of events.
Sadly, at the time, knowledge about the importance of fluid intake was rudimentary and some doctors even prescribed reducing fluids during an illness.
Numerous remedies, all sadly ineffective, were put forward.
Interestingly, one Penzance doctor, Henry Penneck, wrote a paper in The Lancet, the British medical magazine, in 1832, outlining the treatment he had used for cholera victims.
He advocated bleeding from the head, mercury fumigations and bandaging the abdomen.
We know, today, that none of this would have had any beneficial effect, except to offer psychological solace.
So, in reality, in the Newlyn of 1832, the stricken patients received no curative treatment at all and were just allowed to become comatose and pass away. It must have been an unspeakably dreadful time for the next of kin.
Because of the fear of the disease itself and of the soiled condition of the poor dead person, it is probable that few if any of the victims received a civilized Christian burial.
The most likely scenario is that bodies were put in a horse-drawn cart and buried in a mass grave.
At Paul there is a cemetery known as the cholera field and it is here that the majority, perhaps even all, of Newlyn's cholera victims were buried.
History relates that a James Halse, a wealthy landowner at Paul, gave the field, which is about an acre in size, to the Church at that time.
There is no written evidence but it is suspected that in those times there were unkindly superstitions about cholera.
The victims were possibly even regarded as debased or tainted in some way. Few if any of the people who succumbed to the Newlyn cholera epidemic received headstones. Perhaps there was even an unwritten objection to cholera burials in the normal churchyard.
There is a headstone in the St Erth churchyard recording the death of six local cholera victims. Strangely, the inscription does not mention their names but says their deaths were caused by a 'visitation' of the cholera.
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