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Plague

Is it really true that the corpses would still be contaminated, and could still spread Plague after all this time ?

I would have doubted it, but I remember watching a program on TV a few years ago, where the bodies in a London Cemetery were being re-located.

They were using a specialist family firm that employed mainly workers from....You guessed it....Eastern Europe, because they would already have been vaccinated against diseases that are no longer found in the UK.
 
I stand corrected Big Gee :) Never too old to learn!

Makes you think though - if plague could spread so easily with no real transport infrastructure, we stand no chance now we can be anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.
Good grief, ten years ago! Was browing for a mention of Deadman's Lane and spotted this. How right the poster was!
 
just read this thread with great interest so thanks for bringing it up again...

frothy i know its a big ask but would you still have the photos of the church that you posted 10 years back:rolleyes:

lyn
 
Read somewhere that a lot of plague victims were buried on the site of Gamgee House just by Ladywood Middleway

i take it that is is the gamlee house that maggie talks of

 
I have a very old book which says that the plague pit was at Ladywood Green, and was known as the "pest ground" it was opposite St John's Church. (Ref. The making of Birmingham by Robert K. Dent) I don't know where St. John's was though.
It says the plague was brought from London by carrier in a box of clothes to the White Hart Inn in 1665.
There was another from 1631, the Roman Catholic Church St. Peter had a graveyard with a plague pit (According to McKenna, in the midst of Life) and this was disturbed when the International Convention Centre was built on Broad St.
There may have been another at St Mary Whittall Street but McKenna had found no proof of that, and there was another outbreak in 1637 apparently.
rosie.
 
thanks for that info...is the st johns church you mention the one that is still there in ladywood

lyn
 
I have a very old book which says that the plague pit was at Ladywood Green, and was known as the "pest ground" it was opposite St John's Church. (Ref. The making of Birmingham by Robert K. Dent) I don't know where St. John's was though.
It says the plague was brought from London by carrier in a box of clothes to the White Hart Inn in 1665.
There was another from 1631, the Roman Catholic Church St. Peter had a graveyard with a plague pit (According to McKenna, in the midst of Life) and this was disturbed when the International Convention Centre was built on Broad St.
There may have been another at St Mary Whittall Street but McKenna had found no proof of that, and there was another outbreak in 1637 apparently.
rosie.

This is a cutting from Billl Dargue's web site.
The Great Plague of 1665 was believed by Birmingham's first historian William Hutton to have come to the town from London in a box of clothes which was brought by a carrier who stayed at the White Hart Inn in Digbeth. The disease would have spread rapidly in the densely built-up town. Plague houses were marked with a red cross and the victims were allegedly buried outside the town on wasteland at Ladywood Green which lay between Ladywood Middleway and Monument Road. The site was later known as the Pest Ground or the Pest Heath. However, when it was developed for housing in the mid-19th century no evidence of burials was reported. Neither has evidence been found in local parish registers of a sudden increase in the death rate in 1665. Hutton was writing over a hundred years after the event and his account may record a memory of one of many earlier outbreaks in 1631 or 1637, for instance. It may be that the route of the 1665 plague followed Watling Street and by-passed Birmingham.

St. John's Church in Ladywood was not built until 1852 - 1854. St. Peters (RC) Chapel was built after a collection, by a priest, in 1784.
 
Thanks Alan, I think McKenna meant that's where St John's was at his time of writing, the booklet is a bit vague in places. I used to have a list of when Birmingham churches were built and or demolished. etc.
rosie.

Edit, St John's is still there.
 
I have this map/drawing which I think is from the early 19thC. Don't know whether it will aid identification or not. The road cutting across the left hand top corner is Monument Lane/Road and I think the road cutting diagonally across past the 'pest fields' was Ladywood Lane.
 

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Penny. I think you meant that th emap was from the early 19th century. It is the mid 1820s Pigott smith map
 
Thanks Mike, yes. that's what I should have typed. I've edited my post and have now written your information on the back of the map. When I first started family history many years ago, I never put the date or source on anything and now I'm trying to rectify that.

My 3 x gt grandfather lived at Monument Place (you can just see 'place' on Monument Lane). He was there from about 1820 to 1826 with his second wife who was 40 years his junior. I've never been able to find out much about Monument Place except that it had the Church of the Redeemer built on the site in later years followed by a cinema. What struck me about this map was the amount of small gardens, I think they were called 'guinea gardens'.
 
Noticeably only for young males (or gentlemen according to the advert). This would, I guess, be an elementary three R's curriculum.
I am curious about the closure. Was this due to Mrs. Fearon and her daughters having a short holiday? I don't think factories and other small industries closed down at this time (1826), but there were trips and exclusions run by the new railways after 1840 - for those who could afford them - but the 1844 Parliamentary trains Act did allow a less costly journey. Wakes Weeks and similar came some time later I believe and paid holidays were a 20th. century introduction.
On the other hand some of her pupils may have been away with family during the summer.
 
Noticeably only for young males (or gentlemen according to the advert). This would, I guess, be an elementary three R's curriculum.
I am curious about the closure. Was this due to Mrs. Fearon and her daughters having a short holiday? I don't think factories and other small industries closed down at this time (1826), but there were trips and exclusions run by the new railways after 1840 - for those who could afford them - but the 1844 Parliamentary trains Act did allow a less costly journey. Wakes Weeks and similar came some time later I believe and paid holidays were a 20th. century introduction.
On the other hand some of her pupils may have been away with family during the summer.

I wonder if they had an outbreak of something contagious like chicken pox or scarlet fever. I remember the name Fearon from the property. I must unearth my papers and see what I can find. Do you think it was common knowledge that the plague pit was supposed to be there?
 
I do not know the reason, but have seen quite a number of these type of notices in the past concerning re-opening
 
Tacitus wrote back in April 2010 about plague victims buried in Ladywood area. I noticed recently the large number of burials 1760-1761. Wondering if this was a specific epidemic or a large number of plagues in the area. Don't have access to any newspapers of the day, just hoping someone might know of a cause. Cholera, maybe?
 
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