Did Typhoid kill your ancestors?

By Peter Gospel

The story of how it affected one family in the Wolds

Typhoid fever is contracted when people eat or drink food or liquids that have been contaminated by the bacteria Salmonella typhi. Typhoid fever must be distinguished from typhus - although it has similar results and effects it is spread by lice. The distinction however was not made until around 1880 and until that date death certificates often confused the two conditions.

Drinking water from wells, streams, ponds or rivers that were contaminated meant that, in the absence of curative drugs, typhoid fever was the largest killer condition in the Wolds in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most centres of population of course were built adjacent to a source of water; a stream, a river or the like.

The signs and symptoms are dramatic and frightening - sudden onset of fever, severe headache, nausea and loss of appetite, a hoarse cough and either constipation or diarrhoea. Not pleasant conditions when taken singularly let alone combined.

William Gospel was the first-born child of William Gospel and Elizabeth Robinson. He was born in Bishop Wilton in 1787. Ten years later he entered an apprenticeship as a miller, serving at a variety of mills, both wind and water, around the area. On 16th February 1816, at the end of his apprenticeship, he married Jane Stainton, a young lady from Seaton Ross. William was now a journeyman; this meant that he was a qualified miller but plied his trade on behalf of others. He travelled with his wife around the area working at different wind and water mills. In 1819, at North Cave, their first child, John, was born. Soon after the birth of this child, William took over the mill at Millington. Further children, William, Jane, Mary, George and Sarah, were to follow over the next 10 years. By the time Sarah was born, John entered an apprenticeship as - yes, you’ve guessed it - a miller. It was only two years after the birth of Sarah that Jane Gospel started to display the symptoms described above. She died on April 13th 1831 of typhoid fever. The source of the infection was almost certainly the millpond (which still exists) where waters that drove the mill collected before passing through the millrace.

Like most widowers, William, with a brood to care for as well as having to work for a living, remarried. He married his 32-year-old spinster sister-in-law Ann Arnott, and together they had a further 4 children.

William died of what is described as ‘a decline’ in 1838, aged 51 years.

During this decline, John had returned to work with and for his father. The year after his father died he married Elizabeth Irwin, a spinster from Millington. The couple rapidly had three children: Jane Elizabeth, William and William Irwin. William Irwin was so christened because William died two months after his birth of - yes, typhoid fever.

Typhoid became rampant during 1843 and 1844; it greatly affected the Gospel family living at the foot of the valley at Millington. John’s younger brother William and his sister Jane both succumbed to the disease. So did his wife Elizabeth, his son William, and a year later, his youngest son William Irwin. Even with all the deaths there still remained his mother Ann to help look after the remaining children. Nevertheless John did remarry in 1847, to Elizabeth Hodge, a 22-year-old beauty from Pocklington.

It was 4 years before they successfully reproduced. Appreciating the dangers of mill life in the Millington area, the couple moved to Nafferton taking John’s surviving child Jane Elizabeth, now 10 years old, with them.

All in all John must have been depressed. Typhoid at Millington had accounted for his wife, his brother and sister, and three of his children.

His mother remained in Millington with her daughter Anne. Anne later died of typhoid after having an illegitimate child Anne-Marie. Anne herself died of the disease in 1864 leaving Anne-Marie to be cared for by the Parish.

The move to Nafferton did not do John much good. His partner in the mill absconded with the money and John died, virtually penniless, in 1871 of - yes, right again, typhoid.