We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2020
The part played by the public health movement in controlling epidemics in urban areas has received considerable attention from historians, as has the regulation of the milk and meat industries that commenced in the late nineteenth century. However, comparatively little work has been carried out on health in a rural context – and the role played by the horticultural sector in the spread of contagious diseases has barely been covered. Yet, as this article shows, it was a sector that had the potential to produce potent contaminants. By examining histories of the production of one horticultural crop, watercress, it reveals how issues around the provision of a clean urban water supply and idealised imaginings of the countryside as a pure space, played a part in exacerbating the extent of outbreaks of typhoid in the industrial city. It also shows that there was governmental reluctance to regulate an industry that grew a staple product, even when growers themselves were keen for guidance.
1 K. Waddington, ‘“It might not be a nuisance in a country cottage”: sanitary conditions and images of health in Victorian rural wales’, Rural History, 23:2 (2012), 187.
2 H. Newby, Country Life: a Social History of Rural England (London, 1987), p. 157.
3 J. Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 2000).
4 N. Goddard, quoted in Ibid., p. 665.
5 M. Winter, Rural Politics: Policies for Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment (New York and London, 1996), p. 71.
6 P. Brassley, quoted in Thirsk, Agrarian History, p. 594.
7 M. French and J. Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? Food Regulation in the United Kingdom, 1875–1938 (Manchester, 2000).
8 G. Mingay in Thirsk, Agrarian History, p. 807.
9 French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned?, p. 27.
10 R. Nimmo, ‘Governing nonhumans: knowledge, sanitation and discipline in the late 19th and early 20th-century British milk trade’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 9:1 (2008), 80.
11 Waddington, ‘“It might not be a nuisance in a country cottage”’’, p. 188.
12 Named for the artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5?–1682), this was a mirror that tourists would use to frame a view, standing with their backs to the scene and holding it up, so they could admire it in the glass like a picture.
13 Waddington, ‘“It might not be a nuisance”’, p. 188.
14 H. Bellenden Ker, letter read 6th November 1821 to Horticultural Society of London, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, 4 (1822), 537–42.
15 H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1851, London, 1861), p. 145.
16 W. Earley, ‘Watercress: its culture and characteristics’, Gardeners’ Chronicle, IV:2 (October 1875), 423.
17 Mayhew, London Labour, p. 156.
18 R. Nimmo, ‘Animal Plague: Culture, Order and Disease in Late Victorian British Dairy Farming’, in M. Bolton, C. Degnen, eds, Animals and Science: From Colonial Encounters to the Biotech Industry (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 61–83.
19 H. Malchow, ‘Free water: the public drinking fountain movement and Victorian London’, The London Journal, 4:2 (1978), 182.
20 A. Hardy, ‘Parish pump to private pipes: London’s water supply in the nineteenth century’, Medical History, Supplement 11 (1991), 83–4.
21 S. Halliday, ‘Death and miasma in Victorian London: an obstinate belief’, British Medical Journal, 323 (2001), 1469.
22 W. Crookes, ed., ‘Conference on the sewage question’, Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science, 30:786 (18th December 1874), 281.
23 Earley, ‘Watercress: its culture’, p. 432.
24 F. Paley, ‘The Effects of Plants on Sewage Water’, letter to the editor, The Standard, 15:5, issue 16060, January 1876, 19th-Century British Library Newspapers <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/> [June 2012]
25 A. Wynter, ‘The London Commisariat’, The London Quarterly Review, 190 (Oct 1854), 301.
26 A. Wilkinson, ‘The preternatural gardener: the life of James Shirley Hibberd (1825–90)’, Garden History, 26:2 (1998), 153.
27 ‘Water-cresses’, Star, 6th October 1877, 19th-Century British Library Newspapers <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/> [November 2009]
28 S. Hibberd, The Amateur’s Kitchen Garden: Frame-ground and Forcing Pit (London, 1877), p. 102.
29 Wilkinson, ‘The preternatural gardener’, p. 167.
30 Anon., ‘Watercress for the Londoners’, Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 19th July 1884, p. 83.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 ‘Watercress and Enteric fever’, British Medical Journal (1st December 1894), 1262.
35 For more on milk, see Nimmo, ‘Animal Plague’; J. Steere-Williams, ‘Milking science for its worth: the reform of the British milk trade in the late nineteenth century’, Agricultural History, 89:2 (2015), 263–88; and E. H. Whetham, ‘The London milk trade, 1860–1900’, Economic History Review, 17:2 (1964), 369–80.
36 ‘Watercress and Enteric fever’, British Medical Journal, p. 1262.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 ‘Watercress and Typhoid fever’, British Medical Journal (21st Dec 1895), 1595.
40 ‘Typhoid fever and watercress’, British Medical Journal (2nd January 1904), 38.
41 Editorial, ‘Watercress and death’, The Family Doctor, 12th December 1903, cutting in private archive, n.p.
42 ‘Typhoid fever and watercress’, British Medical Journal, p. 38.
43 The Fruit Grower, 1904, cutting in private archive, n.p.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 The Fruit Grower, 1908, cutting in private archive, n.p.
49 H. Letheby, in Appendix Minutes of Evidence East London Waterworks (Thames Supply) Bill and the East London Waterworks (Various Powers) Bill, IX, House of Commons (1867), p. 430.
50 H. R. Haggard, A Gardener’s Year (London, 1905), p. 386.
51 Advertisement showing purity reports (1904), private archive.
52 Manchester Daily Despatch, 1905, cutting in private archive, n.p.
53 The Fruit Grower, 1904, cutting in private archive, n.p.
54 R. Nimmo, ‘Governing nonhumans’, p. 83.
55 London County Council, Annual Report of the Proceedings of the Council (1904), p. 212 <https://books.google.co.uk>.
56 Liverpool Echo (1905), cutting in private archive, n.p.
57 S. Rideal, Sewage and the Bacterial Purification of Sewage, 3rd edn (New York and London, 1906), p. 323.
58 Ibid., p. 324.
59 The Fruit Grower, 1905, cutting in private archive, n.p.
60 The Fruit Grower, 20th April 1905, cutting in private archive, n.p.
61 Ibid.
62 Manchester Evening Chronicle, 1905, cutting in private archive, n.p.
63 British Weekly Commissioners, Toilers in London; or Inquiries concerning Female Labour in the Metropolis (London, 1889), p. 9 <http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications3/newtoilers.htm> [August 2010], now at http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm>.
64 British Weekly Commissioners, Toilers in London, p. 12.
65 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
66 The Fruit Grower, 1905.
67 The Fruit Grower, 1906, cutting in private archive, n.p.
68 Board of Agriculture, ‘The cultivation of watercress’, Journal of the Board of Agriculture, XX1:12 (March 1915), 1093.
69 Ibid., p. 1095.
70 Ibid., p. 1098.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 J. Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England from 1815 to the Present Day (London, 1989), p. 244.
76 See G. Hardach, The First World War, 1914–1918, trans. P. Ross and B. Ross (1977, London and Berkeley, 1981), pp. 108–09. Also J. Martin, ‘Saving the nation from starvation: the heroic age of food control, June 1917 to July 1918’, Rural History, 30:2 (2019), 181–96.
77 ‘Medicinal Watercress’, Dorset County Chronicle, July 1916, cutting in private archive, n.p.
78 See Burnett, Plenty and Want.
79 ‘Health Mecca’, Daily News, 23rd February 1926, n.p.
80 A. H. Hoare, ‘Watercress and its cultivation’, Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture (March 1924 reproduced in The Fruit Grower, 29th May 1924), p. 77, cutting in private archive.
81 National Archives folder MH 56159, ‘Watercress and Disease’, H. Scurfield, ‘Report on Watercress Beds in Dorset’, Ministry of Health Report, 19th December 1924.
82 H. Scurfield, ‘The Value of Watercress as a Food: Suggestions for its Extended Use’, British Medical Association, Proceedings of AGM 1923, Section of Public Health (1923), pp. 759–60.
83 National Archives folder MH 56159, ‘Watercress and Disease’, H. Scurfield.
84 Ibid.
85 National Archives folder MH 56/59, Ministry of Health file, letter from Dr Macewen to Dr Hyslop Thomson, 28th November 1927.
