Exorcizing molly malone: Typhoid and shellfish consumption in urban Britain 1860-1960

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 72-90

  Hardy, Anne ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 78751676771     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/55.1.72     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. The song, by James Yorkston (a Scot), appeared in a London collection published by Francis, Brothers and Day in 1884, acknowledging an earlier Edinburgh edition. It is still widely sung.
2. V. M. Belin, Coquillages et la fièvre ostréo-typhoide. Un point d'histoire contemporaine, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1934, p. 7;
3. see also Anne Hardy, 'Animals, Disease and Man: Making Connections', Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, spring 2003.
4. Leader, 'Enteric fever in France', British Medical Journal 1936, vol. 2, p. 185.
5. G. Dubreuil, 'L'endémie typhique et paratyphique en France', Revue d'hygiène 58, 1936, pp. 321-70.
6. Robert Neild, The English, the French and the Oyster, Quiller Press, London, 1995, pp. 118-20.
7. Neild, Oyster, pp. 178-9.
8. Cited in Sir James Crichton-Browne, 'Dangers in our Food', Sanitary Journal 8, 1902-3, p. 182.
9. Crichton-Browne, 'Dangers in our Food', p. 185.
10. The shades of oyster value are set out in John R. Philpots, Oysters and All About Them, John Richardson and Company, London, 1890, vol. 1, pp. 243-4.
11. 'Babble', Music Hall and Theatre Review, 14 Feb. 1891, p. 3. I am indebted to Carole Reeves for this reference.
12. Jonathan Pereira, A Treatise on Food and Diet, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1843, p. 297.
13. Philpots, Oysters, vol. I, pp. 318, 321.
14. Philpots, Oysters, vol. 1, p. 322.
15. The Glorious Oyster, ed. Hector Bolitho, Ditchling Press, Sussex, 1960, p. 29.
16. Pereira, Treatise, p. 298.
17. Anon, The Oyster. Where, How and When to Find, Cook and Eat it (1861)
18. cited in Neild, Oyster, p. 42.
19. Plagiarized by Philpots, Oysters, p. 321.
20. James Bertram, The Harvest of the Sea, John Murray, London, 1865, p. 346.
21. Neild, Oyster, p. 17.
22. For attitudes to the sea, see Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1988;
23. on the eighteenth-century passion for oysters, Eleanor Clark, The Oysters of Locmariaquer, Secker and Warburg, London, 1965, p. 43.
24. For sea-water drinking see John K. Walton, The English Seaside Resort: a Social History 1750-1914, Leicester University Press, 1983, pp. 11-12, 41;
25. Corbin, Lure of the Sea, pp. 65-8.
26. On the social spread of seaside holiday see Walton, English Seaside Resort, p. 2.
27. Report of the Commission on Sea Fisheries: Minutes of Evidence, BPP 1866 xiii, qq. 14, 956; 55, 412;
28. on the impact of railway extension see Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian City: the Food Supply of Manchester 1770-1870, Manchester University Press, 1992, pp. 131, 133.
29. Bertram, Harvest, p. 384.
30. Pereira, Treatise, pp. 298-9.
31. John Robertson, MOH for Birmingham, in discussion following L. W. Darra Mair, 'The Aetiology of Enteric Fever in Belfast in relation to Water Supply, Sanitary Circumstances and Shellfish', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 23, 1908-9, p. 241.
32. T. Lloyd Hughes and William Goldie, 'River Tees Shell-fish', Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health 5, 1946, p. 74.
33. R. W. Dodgson, 'The Purification of Polluted Shellfish', Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 58, 1937-8, p. 490;
34. A. M. N. Pringle, 'Enteric Fever in Ipswich', Public Health 22, 1908-9, p. 418.
35. Gilda O'Neill, My East End: Memories of Life in Cockney London, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1999, pp. 195, 205, 207.
36. Crichton-Browne, 'Dangers in our Food', p. 186;
37. see also J. T. C. Nash, 'Shellfish and their Relation to Disease, more particularly Typhoid Fever', Journal of State Medicine 11, 1903, pp. 710-26.
38. See Bertram, Harvest, p. 332;
39. Philpots, Oysters, p. 251.
40. Dickens records these seafood items as being loaded into a town coach for a wedding visit in the country: Pickwick Papers (1836-37), Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 375.
41. William Cowper, The Centenary Letters, ed. Simon Malpas, Carcarnet Press, Manchester, 2000, p. 51.
42. Neild, Oyster, p. 40.
43. 'London's Fish Supply', Fish Trades Gazette, National Fisheries Record, and Game and Poultry Trades Chronicle 8, no. 401, 24 Jan. 1891, p. 10.
44. London County Council, Annual Report, 1910, Medical Officer of Health, p. 101.
45. Local Government Board, Annual Report, Medical Officer, BPP 1914 xxxix, p. 48.
46. Medical Officer of Health, Manchester, Annual Report, 1904, p. 131.
47. Medical Officer of Health, Manchester, Annual Report, 1907, p. 91;
48. 1912, p. 38.
49. Medical Officer of Health, Manchester, Annual Report, 1906, p. 58.
50. Darra Mair, 'Aetiology', pp. 215, 218.
51. A. Mearns Fraser, 'Enteric Fever and Shell-fish', Public Health 22, 1908-9, p. 53.
52. Charles Williams, Silver-shell; or the Adventures of an Oyster, Ward and Lock, London, 1856, p. 166.
53. Williams, Silver-shell, pp. 170-1.
54. For details of the London winkle trade see John Eyre, 'The bacteriological analysis of winkles as they arrive in the market', Journal of Hygiene 33, 1933, pp. 1-11.
55. Bertram, Harvest, p. 374.
56. Report of the Commission on Sea Fisheries, Minutes of Evidence, BPP 1866 xiii, q. 15, 373.
57. Christopher Hamlin, What Becomes of Pollution?, Garland Publishing, New York, 1987.
58. Bertram, Harvest, p. 387.
59. Sir Peter Eade, Letter, 'Typhoid Fever and Oysters and other Molluscs', British Medical Journal 1895 vol. 1, p. 122.
60. Cited in Bulstrode, 'Report on an Inquiry', 1896, p. 29 (note 33 above).
61. Pereira, Treatise, pp. 295-6.
62. C. A. Cameron, 'Oysters and typhoid', British Medical Journal 1880 vol. 2, p. 471.
63. Philpots, Oysters, p. 246.
64. Local Government Board, Annual Report, Introduction to Medical Officer's Supplement, BPP 1896 xxxvii, cd 8214, p. 7.
65. John M. Eyler, Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine 1885-1935, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 119-27;
66. Local Government Board, Annual Report, Medical Officer of Health, Report, BPP 1896 xxxvii, Appendix 3, pp. 274-89.
67. Sir William Broadbent, A Note on the Transmission of the Infection of Typhoid Fever by Oysters', British Medical Journal 1895 vol. 1, p. 61.
68. Local Government Board, Annual Report, 1896, Medical Officer's Supplement, p. 26;
69. and Appendix 4, pp. 290-6.
70. The full quotation appears in Anne Hardy, 'On the Cusp: Epidemiology and Bacteriology at the Local Government Board, 1890-1905', Medical History 42, 1998, p. 344.
71. Bivalve, 'Natives', Fish Trades Gazette 7, 1890, p. 12;
72. Bulstrode, 'Report on an Inquiry', 1896, p. 30 (note 33 above).
73. Dorothy E. Watkins, 'The English Revolution in Social Medicine', unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1984.
74. Medical Officer of Health, Manchester, Annual Report, 1896, p. 80.
75. Medical Officer of Health, Manchester, Annual Report, 1898, p. 78.
76. Nash, 'Shellfish and their relation to disease', 1903, p. 710 (note 27 above).
77. Lancet 1902 vol. 2, p. 1, 338.
78. Lancet 1902 vol. 2, pp. 1, 567-9;
79. Neild, Oyster, p. 118.
80. See also H. Timbrell Bulstrode, 'Report upon Alleged Oyster-borne Enteric Fever and other illness following the mayoral banquets at Winchester and Southampton', Local Government Board, Annual Report, Medical Officer of Health, Report, BPP 1904 xxvi, Appendix A no. 9: pp. 129-89.
81. T. Baird, 'Some notes on the Purification of Oysters', The Medical Officer 88, 1952, p. 203.
82. The Table, 16 Aug. 1902, p. 183.
83. The Table, 7 Feb. 1903, p. 171.
84. See for example The Times, 30 July 1903, p. 7;
85. Jan. 1904, p. 9;
86. Aug. 1906, p. 11;
87. Aug. 1907, p. 8;
88. Dec. 1908, p. 4;
89. April 1909, p. 14;
90. June 1912, p. 4;
91. Daily Mail, 15 Dec. 1902, p. 3;
92. Dec. 1902, p. 3;
93. Dec. 1902, p. 5;
94. Dec. 1902, p. 3, 20 Dec. 1902, p. 3, etc.
95. See for example Southend-on-Sea Observer and South-east Essex Gazette, 17 July 1902, p. 8;
96. Aug. 1902, pp. 3, 8;
97. Oct. 1902, pp. 6, 8;
98. Dec. 1902, p. 8. The paper reported regularly on these issues in the first decade of the century.
99. Jane Grigson, Good Food, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 40.
100. See Mary T. Dowd and Jean D. Jameson, Food. Its Composition and Preparation. A Texbook for Classes in Household Science, Chapman Hall, London, 1925, p. 123;
101. Florence A. George, A Manual of Cookery, Edward Arnold, London, 1921;
102. Mrs A. B. Marshall's Cookery Book, Robert Hayes, London, 1926, p. 80;
103. Florence B. Jack, Cookery for Every Household, Thomas Nelson, London, 1938, pp. 109-10.
104. Anon, 'Mr. C. H. Senn', The Times, 19 Oct. 1934, p. 19.
105. C. H. Senn, The Practical Cookery Manual, The Food and Cookery Publishing Co., London, 1916, p. 68.
106. Southend-on-Sea Observer and South-east Essex Gazette, 19 Jan. 1905, p. 8;
107. Feb. 1905, p. 4.
108. Sylvia Everett, Southend Seaside Holiday, Phillimore, Chichester, 1990, pp. 29-30.
109. For the rise of fish and chips in this period, see John K. Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870-1940, Leicester University Press, 1992.
110. J. R. Hammond, Food, HMSO and Longman, Green and Co., 1956, vol. 3, p. 50.
111. Fishmongers' Company, Oysters and other Shellfish December 1902 to June 1909, Waterlow Brothers and Layton Ltd., London, 1909, pp. 5-7 and beyond.
112. Dunlop, 'Pollution of Shellfish', 1913, pp. 385-6 (note 43 above);
113. see also Joseph Biggar, 'The Bacteriological Control of Shellfish', Journal of Hygiene 29, 1929-30, pp. 62-70.
114. J. W. H. Eyre, 'The Oyster and Public Health', Public Health 38, 1924, p. 20.
115. See, for example, Dunlop, 'Pollution of Shellfish', 1913, p. 385-6 (note 43 above);
116. T. T. Baird, 'Oysters, Cockles and Mussels', Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health 20, 1961, p. 155.
117. R. W. Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 31:2, 1937-8, p. 925.
118. Buchan, 'Typhoid fever', p. 568;
119. Eyre, 'The Oyster and Public Health', 1924, p. 25.
120. Mearns Fraser, 'Enteric Fever and Shell-fish', 1908-9, pp. 53-4 (note 42 above).
121. Charles Grant Pugh, 'The Protection of Shell Fisheries', Public Health 23, 1909-10, pp. 336-7.
122. Medical Officer of Health, Birmingham, Annual Report, 1912, p. 28.
123. Pugh, 'The Protection of Shell Fisheries', p. 337.
124. Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', p. 387.
125. Mearns Fraser, 'Enteric fever and Shell-fish', p. 53.
126. Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', p. 925;
127. and his 'Purification of Polluted Shellfish', 1937-38, p. 490 (note 25 above).
128. Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', p. 925.
129. Editorial, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', The Medical Officer 56, 1936, p. 62.
130. As previous note.
131. Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health';
132. Eyre, 'The Oyster and Public Health', p. 925.
133. 'Cleansing of Shellfish', Parliament and Public Health, Medical Officer 59, 1938, p. 10.
134. Neild, Oyster, p. 143.
135. Neild, Oyster, p. 145.
136. Eyre, 'The Oyster and Public Health', pp. 25-6.
137. For other factors possibly at play in the reduction of typhoid in London at this time see Anne Hardy, The Epidemic Streets: Infectious Disease and the Rise of Preventive Medicine 1855-1900, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 181-90.
138. Editorial, 'Shellfish and Enteric Fever', Public Health 35, 1921-2, p. 4;
139. Eyre, 'The Oyster and Public Health', p. 26.
140. H. Rolleston, in discussion following Dodgson, 'Shellfish and the Public Health', p. 934.
141. Editorial, 'Typhoid Fever in France', British Medical Journal 1936 vol. ii, pp. 185-6;
142. Dubreuil, 'L'endémie typhique et paratyphique en France', pp. 321-70.
143. Williams, Silver-shell, p. 166;
144. Bertram, Harvest, p. 332.
145. O'Neill, My East End, p. 102.