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 The Bradwell Fever: the story of a terrifying illness is recalled by local historian, S. Evans, writing in 1882:
"We have now to record a sad calamity which befel the town in 1869 – a visitation which will long be remembered as the most terrible which had ever happened in Bradwell. We have heard and read of the great plague of Eyam in the year 1666, which took away in a few months five-sixths of the inhabitants, but while the epidemic which broke out in Bradwell was not by far so harrowing as this, still it cannot but be regarded as a very serious affair. The fever of which we speak broke out at the latter end of 1868, those who were the first to suffer from it residing in the lower parts of the town, in the thoroughfares called Bridge-street, Nether Side, Church Street and Town Bottom.
Many and various were the suppositions as to the cause of the contagion, but its origin is still a mystery, although some attributed it to bad drainage, - all the filthy water, it is said, settled and stagnated in the sewers at the lower end of the village, in the immediate vicinity of the out-break of the pestilence, and colour is given to this argument by the fact that no fresh cases were reported after a heavy flood had completely washed out the sewers and water-courses.
More Pictures
Health and Sickness
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