Chester's historic health hero

Every week in April 2020 we have applauded the work being done by healthcare heroes and in the archives we have the records of celebrated local health hero Dr John Haygarth whose work in previous epidemics was not only far-reaching and pioneering, but also very close to the challenges and experiences of today.

The medical profession at the time of Dr Haygarth was in the early stages of understanding, learning to control and attempting to eradicate some of the most deadly infectious diseases which ravaged the population in the 18th century. His theory on fever control: isolation of the patient, good ventilation of hospital wards and thorough and systematic cleanliness and hygiene measures were ground-breaking.

Two early influences on his life were a brilliant surgeon, John Dawson who drilled into Haygarth the importance of keeping and making use of statistical data and William Cullen, a leading physician at Edinburgh with his teachings on fever.

Haygarth’s connection with Chester began in 1767 when he was appointed as a physician at the Infirmary and he was to work here for the next 30 years. Chester Infirmary was founded in 1755 for the treatment of the sick poor and you can still see registers of patients, their diseases and their outcomes in the Chester Infirmary collection at Cheshire Archives.

Throughout his time in Chester he worked on the prevention and control of infectious fevers. In 1774 he was appointed by the Assembly of Chester to conduct a survey of the health of the inhabitants of the city. He carried out detailed analysis on births and deaths in relation to living conditions. His conclusions were that the overall health of the city was good but there were high rates of mortality in some of the poorer suburbs where crowded and insanitary dwellings provided ideal grounds for disease to spread from person to person. He identified the places where people came into close contact through the congested narrow streets adjoining the city walls as particularly dangerous.

Haygarth wrote that 'the natural smallpox was so dreadfully fatal to the poor inhabitants of Chester as to produce a deep impression upon my mind, especially when I considered, that it was possible to prevent such destruction.'

He advocated innoculation on a large scale (this was controversial years before Jenner worked on vaccination) accompanied by 'rules of prevention'. Rules on control of fever included removing patients from their family home and isolating them in a specialist ward, utmost attention to cleanliness and washing of bedding and clothing and no mixing with fever patients.

As early as 1771 Haygarth had begun to make improvements that are recorded in hospital board minutes. Visiting was limited to nearest relations, warm baths were installed, and wooden partitions were replaced with removable curtains to separate the beds.

In 1784 he was instrumental in setting up the first specialist fever wards at the Infirmary. An entry from 15th June 1784 reads:

“Ordered that the north attic storey be immediately fitted up according to the physicians instructions for the acceptance of fever patients”

On 4th October 1791 "Ordered that the fever nurse be desired to keep in her own apartments in future and that every necessary she is in want of be brought to her”

Success in fever wards at Chester encouraged the formation of dedicated fever hospitals in Manchester, Liverpool and London. In his published statistical work 'Observations in the Population and diseases of Chester in the year 1774', the remarkable patient outcome data in the Infirmary registers and innovation in hospital planning we can easily recognise the advances that we have come to know as contact tracing, social distancing, 20 second handwashing and catch it, bin it, kill it!

Haygarth retired to Bath in 1798 and lived there until his death in 1827.

Explore Haygarth images in our flickr album, or discover John Haygarth's Medical World with University of Chester's history undergraduates story map

Time for Tea!

We’ve been browsing the collection at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies for all things tea-related, so pop the kettle on, relax with a brew, as we go on a tour of Cheshire tea-time traditions past and present…

Afternoon tea first became fashionable in the 19th century, when Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, got peckish around 4 o’clock (who doesn’t?!) With dinner not being served till much later, she and her friends began to take cups of tea with bread, butter and cakes to sustain themselves through the afternoon and early evening. It became a fashionable social event, usually served between 4 and 5 o’clock.

For those of you who favour coffee over tea, coffee houses were popular haunts in the 17th and 18th centuries for men to meet for conversation and business, whilst enjoying the drink newly arrived in Europe. Prior to this, coffee had only been considered as a form of medicine. Tea, hot chocolate, and light meals were also served in coffee houses. One such coffee house in Cheshire was King’s Coffee House, located on King’s Street, Knutsford. Opened in 1907, the building housed council offices, a coffee house and a memorial to novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.

What about a slice of cake or biscuit to go with your brew? You need look no further than Mrs Elizabeth Raffald (1733 – 1781), housekeeper at Arley Hall in the 18th century. She then went on to become a successful writer after her cookery book “The Experienced English Housekeeper” was published in 1769. Containing 800 recipes and pieces of advice for ladies, housekeepers and cooks, the book was so popular there were around 20 editions printed in her lifetime. Did you know that the origins of the modern wedding cake can be traced back to her? Why not try out her recipe for macaroons?!

Several of the recipes to be found in “The Experienced English Housekeeper” are for traditional cakes and tasty treats associated with Cheshire. They include: 

• The Old Chester Pudding – made from flour, milk, breadcrumbs, suet, castor sugar, blackcurrant jam, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt. Steamed for 3 hours, then a blackcurrant sauce is made as an accompaniment
• Bun Loaf or “Bara Brith” – Welsh Bun Loaf, with origins in Cheshire. Made from raisins, currants, sultanas, sugar, lard, flour, candied peel, mixed spice, yeast, hot water, milk and eggs. Also known as speckled bread
• Chester Buns – made from butter, flour, castor sugar, egg, milk, and yeast
• Chester Cake – a simple and economical cake, made using flour, baking powder, stale cake (!), golden syrup, currants, and ground ginger.

Where could you buy your cake ingredients from, as well as tea and confectionary, in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Bollands in Chester was established in 1846, as a fine tea and coffee merchant, located on Eastgate Row. You could also give your patronage to Dutton’s in Chester, which served “dainty afternoon teas”.

So whatever your beverage of choice, and wherever you choose to enjoy it, we hope you have enjoyed this “dainty” look at the afternoon tea tradition in Cheshire!

Volunteer stories: Record Office staff get cooking

For our popular 'Cooking the Books' event staff at the Record Office volunteered their time and culinary skills to recreate recipes from the archives ... here is a modern take on the 18th century cook and businesswoman Elizabeth Raffald's herb pie!

Just nine lines of recipe but how to recreate the pie in a modern kitchen? I began with groats … any grain with the husk still on. Thought about going a bit Ottolenghi with freekeh which could work nicely with the other flavours but settled on pot barley to remain authentic local.

I decided early on that I wouldn’t be adding a pound of butter at the end but would cook with butter throughout – I wondered if the reasoning behind boiling all the ingredients and then adding such a large quantity of butter was to do with how tricky it may have been to control the heat on domestic fires and ranges so risk burning it, but how vital it would have been for flavour and calories during Lent? The fact that Elizabeth mentions the option of a raised crust made me opt for hot water crust pastry.

Serves 4-6

For the filling
75g unsalted butter
1 large onion, diced
200g pot barley
1 large leek, sliced
parsley
lettuce
beetroot tops or chard
baby leaf spinach
2 apples, sliced

For the pastry
300g plain flour
75g butter
75g lard
135 ml hot water
salt
1 egg


Take a large saucepan. Gently cook the onion in 25g of the butter, stir in the barley to coat and add enough boiling water to cover. Leave to simmer for around 40 minutes, topping up with boiling water as necessary. Test the barley can be bitten, turn off the heat and leave to cool with the lid on, any remaining liquid should be absorbed.

Make the hot water crust pastry. Rub the butter into the flour until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. In a small pan on a gentle heat melt the lard in the hot water, then pour onto the flour mixture. Mix with a knife and bring it together into a ball. Leave to cool until room temperature and finish making the filling.

Take a deep frying pan and gently fry the leeks in the remaining butter. Roughly chop enough lettuce, parsley and beetroot tops or chard to match the quantity of leeks and add them to the frying pan with the same quantity of baby spinach leaves. (If using chard add the chopped thicker stalks at the same time as the leeks). Cook until the leaves have collapsed and stir in the sliced apple and groats. Season well with salt and pepper to taste.

Roll out two thirds of the pastry and line a ten inch square baking tin. Add the filling and top with a lid rolled from the remaining pastry. Press the edges together and beat the egg with a pinch of salt and brush onto the pie.

Place in the middle of the oven preheated to 180 degrees centigrade and bake for about an hour, the pastry will be golden brown.

Volunteer Stories: Records of the Ridge

A ‘stray item from the archives of Merriman, Porter and Long, solicitors of Marlborough’ arrived on the archivist’s desk, transferred to Cheshire Archives from the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. The same archivist who, a few months earlier, had run a training session for volunteers embarking on a project to research and locate documentary and physical evidence of quarrying on Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge. There were quarries marked on this map of Manley – the archivist alerted the group to the new arrival … David Joyce, volunteer with the Ridge, Rocks and Springs project completes the story …

“A tin case containing some old plans of lands seemingly of no use” reads the faded, discoloured, remnant of the original wrapper inside Cheshire Record Office folder D8835. How wrong this was.

The staff at the Record Office had kindly directed us to this treasure and it provides a fascinating insight into the Manor of Manley. The accession contains four maps of Manley. The separate sections are marked north, south, east and west quarters and include instructions how to overlap them to make the complete manor. The heading of the maps is “A Plan of the Manor of Manley belonging to Jocelyn Deane Esq 1777 taken from an original plan for Robert Davies Esq 1722.”

We have been researching Manley as part of the Sandstone Ridge Trust ‘The Ridge Rocks and Springs’ project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project is looking at quarries, ancient water supplies and historic graffiti along Cheshire’s sandstone ridge.

Previous research suggests that Manley quarry has been in use since Roman times but there are two main quarries in the parish and it is often difficult to distinguish between them when reference is being made to ‘the quarry’. One is usually known as Manley Quarry, and the other one is on Simmonds Hill. These maps clearly show Manley quarry but at that date, the quarry on Simmonds Hill was not marked. There is a sketch of Simon’s Hill (now Simmonds Hill) but no quarry is shown and the area is simply labelled ‘Commons’. In contrast, Manley Quarry is sketched showing the workings and buildings.

But - what was the windmill used for shown next to ‘Croft by the house – tenant Alice Frodsham’? The ‘Moss’ has clear sketch markings but which are hard to interpret –possibly peat cutting? The spelling of many places varies, such as Molesworth Common (now Moldsworth) and the Forest of Dalamere (not Delamere). Lords Well is documented but not Swans Well which was an important landmark on a map of Delamere Forest dated 1813.

As usual with historical research the documents throw up as many questions as answers!

The project has now published its findings online and in a booklet.