Chapter Thirty-Seven
Two weeks had passed before Tildy managed to visit each household where cholera had attacked.
Each day had brought news of fresh outbreaks, and she wanted to gain as much information as she possibly could to support her theory.
In the meantime she insisted that none of her loved ones drank any water that had not been previously strained through clean rags and boiled.
Although Daniel, Old Esther and Davy thought that she was being foolish in this, nevertheless they humoured her and did as she begged them.
‘Water? The cholera is carried by the water supply?’ Charles Brown exclaimed doubtfully.
They were in his room at Widow Sprake’s house.
The man’s once florid features were now grey-hued and his eyes ringed by the dark shadows of exhaustion.
Although he was not one of the Board of Health’s officially appointed doctors, nevertheless many people preferred to come to him close locations where the households shared a common water supply.
‘But if that is the case then why doesn’t everyone in that locality fall victim to the cholera?’ he challenged.
She shrugged, ‘I don’t know, Charles. Mayhap some people are naturally resistant to it.
But I have another thought about this point.
Just consider who are the majority of the victims. Women and children and the very poor.
Now you know as well as I that all those who can afford it tend to drink very little plain water with their meals or for refreshment.
We drink ale or cider or small beer, do we not?
I doubt if the rich taste well water more than a couple of times in their lives.
But in the poor families, where there is little money, then it is the men who drink whatever can be afforded, and the women and children have to make do with water. ’
He pursed his lips reflectively, and nodded slowly, ‘There may be something in what you say.’
Encouraged by this, Tildy went on excitedly, ‘Consider the Pitts family, and old Mother Cater. Mistress Pitts and Maria seemed to be rallying at times during their illness, but then they would drink copiously of fresh water, and afterwards they would relapse. Mother Cater also used to drink water from the pump at the house there.’
‘But did not you and Lucas Royston also drink water from that pump?’ Brown pointed out.
Tildy shook her head. ‘I only drank it once. I didn’t like the taste, so after that I always took a flask of ale or cider with me. And I don’t think Lucas Royston ever tastes water from one year to the next. He always drinks wine, or whatever other spirit is available.’
Charles Brown mused over this for some time, and Tildy grew impatient and pressed him, ‘Well, Charles, what do you think? Could I be right?’
He sighed and shrugged, ‘Well, you could be, Tildy. But then, so could all those others who say it is caused by miasmas or electric effluvium or cholera flies or bad air.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ Tildy was slightly annoyed by his reaction. ‘But there’s naught that can be done about electric effluvium or miasmas or cholera flies, is there, Charles? If I am right and it is the water, then something can be done to guard against it.’
‘Such as what?’ he demanded, his weariness making him speak sharply.
‘We can try and purify the water. We can strain it, and boil it before use. We can prevent people drawing water from the wells that we know carry the infection.’ Tildy’s own heightened emotions made her almost plead with him, ‘At least we can do something to fight back against this foul thing, Charles. Instead of standing helpless while it takes the lives of men, women and children.’ She paused for a moment, staring at him with huge eyes, and then begged, ‘Come with me to the Board of Health, Charles. Support me in this, and help me to persuade them to take measures to purify the water supplies in the infected areas. Please, Charles, help me in this.’
The man thought hard for some moments, turning over in his mind all that she had said, and was forced to admit that it was an appealing idea.
At length he told her, ‘The Board meets at ten o’clock in the forenoon, does it not?
It’s too late now for us to go to them this day. But I’ll go there with you tomorrow … ’
*
‘Water? Carried in the water? What arrant nonsense!’ Henry Milward’s plump pink features mirrored the scorn he felt at hearing such a statement. ‘It’s preposterous! Utterly preposterous!’
Judging by their expressions the majority of the men sitting ranged round the long table in the vestry room of Saint Stephen’s Chapel were in agreement with him.
‘How can you say that, Mister Milward?’ Tildy challenged, her cheeks burning with mingled embarrassment and anger as she heard sneering gibes directed at her, and saw the contemptuous smiles the men were exchanging between themselves.
‘How can I say it, Crawford?’ The Needle Master puffed pompously. ‘I can say it because I’ve been drinking the water in this parish for more than fifty years, and I don’t look as if I’ve taken any harm from it, do I?’
Charles Brown had accompanied Tildy to this meeting of the Board of Health out of friendship.
Although he did not fully believe in her theory of water-borne cholera, nevertheless he was prepared to keep an open mind about it, and as he had already told her, he considered it to be as likely as any of the other theories being bruited abroad.
Now he felt his own resentment rising at this cavalier treatment the Board was meting out to Tildy, and he spoke out, directing his words towards John Clayton.
‘Gentlemen, I do not think we should so lightly dismiss what Mistress Crawford has said concerning this matter. She has presented a well-reasoned argument, based on her own very thorough investigations, and to my mind her theory is as feasible, and mayhap in some ways more feasible, than the other explanations currently being offered as to the causes of this present epidemic. I would ask Mister Milward what qualifies him to dismiss so scathingly what Mistress Crawford has put forward?’
Doctor Alexander Pratt, sallow-faced and lanky, wearing a full-bottomed tie wig beneath his tall black hat, was quick to take up this challenge on behalf of his patient and old friend.
‘Mister Milward is qualified … by virtue of his … standing in this parish … sir.’ He spoke in short staccato bursts. ‘And I support him … in what he says … by virtue of my professional … qualifications, sir.’
‘Do you indeed,’ Charles Brown’s spirit was now fully roused, and he committed himself fully in Tildy’s support. ‘And by virtue of my own professional qualifications, I support Mistress Crawford in what she says.’
‘Your professional qualifications, sir?’ Henry Milward openly jeered. ‘And what are they, pray? You came into this parish as a cheapjack, I believe, so where have you gained these qualifications that you boast of? I didn’t know that there existed a Faculty of Medicine in Salters Yard.’
This last gibe brought roars of mocking laughter from the Board members, and a dull flush of anger suffused Brown’s face.
While the Board members continued to laugh and poke fun at him, he walked to the head of the table where John Clayton, in stark contrast to his colleagues, was sitting in grim silence.
Brown took a flat oilskin-wrapped packet from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it to the clergyman.
‘Could I ask you to peruse these papers, Reverend Clayton, sir, and tell these gentlemen what information is contained within them.’
The laughter stilled and a silence fell upon the room as the clergyman unwrapped the oilskin and taking out the sheets of parchment it contained, closely scanned them.
When he had done so, he frowned, and held them high.
‘These documents, gentlemen, confirm that, Charles Claude Brown, Esq., is a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, and late Surgeon in His Majesty’s Royal Navy.
’ Audible gasps of surprise sounded around the table, and John Clayton frowned at Henry Milward, and invited tartly, ‘Would you care to examine these documents yourself, Mister Milward, and perhaps after doing so, you may think it only befitting in a gentleman such as yourself, to offer an apology to Doctor Brown for having doubted his veracity?’ Milward snatched at the parchments and scowlingly examined them.
Then he laid them on the table and grudgingly muttered, ‘I offer my apology for having doubted your word, Brown.’
Charles Brown nodded curtly in acceptance.
It was John Clayton who now asserted his leadership.
He smiled at Tildy, and invited her, ‘Mistress Crawford, concerning this theory you are propounding, could you now please once again explain your reasoning to the Board?’ He aimed a sarcastic barb at the men around him, ‘It may well be that some of the points you have already so ably made were not fully appreciated by these gentlemen. After all new theories are sometimes difficult for untrained minds to grasp without constant repetition.’
Tildy’s colour heightened and her heart thudded as she faced the silent men.
She could sense the hostility and resentment that emanated from them towards her.
She knew that she was arousing all their innate prejudices by asserting herself in this way, and offending against their indoctrinated belief in the superiority of man over woman, and rich over poor.
‘I think that the cholera is carried by water, because she began hesitantly, and stumbled over her words. But as she continued to speak her belief in what she was saying gave her confidence, and she spoke with an ever increasing certainty and fluency.
‘ … and so, gentlemen, I think we must immediately seal off those wells which are infected, and make the people strain and boil all the water that they use. We could also take further measures, such as purchasing for those who have no money, ale and cider for their drink.’ She fell silent, and stood waiting apprehensively for a reaction.
John Clayton nodded and smiled at her, ‘Many thanks, Mistress Crawford. May I congratulate you on having presented your arguments so concisely.’ He looked around the table. ‘Well, gentlemen?’
Henry Milward was still seething inwardly at having been forced into apologising to Charles Brown.
Now he seized his opportunity to strike back.
‘Purchase ale and cider for the paupers to make merry on? That’s a fine thing to be told we must do, to be sure!
’ he exclaimed scathingly, and with a sneering smile enquired of Tildy, ‘And should we also purchase tobacco for them, Mistress Crawford, and best beef and white bread, and other dainties for their stomachs so that they will have strength enough to enjoy getting drunk at our expense?’
Abruptly he slammed his plump hands down on the table top, and thundered angrily, ‘I’ll be damned if I’ve ever heard the like of it, gentlemen!
It appears that it’s not sufficient for the lower orders that we maintain a hospital, and doctors and nurses at our own expense, and supply them free and in abundance with all the medicines, and the other necessities.
Oh no,’ he shook his head until his hanging jowls quivered violently.
‘Oh no! We are now told that we must buy them their pleasures as well. We must purchase the means for them to follow their usual course of getting swinish drunk at each and every opportunity that presents itself.’
Again he paused, glaring around at his colleagues, his bulbous eyes bulging in his pink sweating features.
‘Well, I for one will never do such, gentlemen. And I consider it to be naught else but rank insolence that they should see fit to demand this from us, their benefactors and betters.’ A storm of applause greeted his words, feet stamping on the floor, fists pounding on the table.
Tildy could only stand and stare with blank amazement, that her words should be so deliberately and grossly misconstrued, and the faces of Charles Brown and John Clayton mirrored the disgust that they were both feeling at this exhibition by men who were purportedly the social elite of the parish.
It was Charles Brown who was first to recognise the certainty of inevitable defeat. Going to Tildy he took her arm and jerked his head towards the door. ‘Come, my dear. We serve no useful purpose by remaining here a moment longer.’
She began to protest, wanting to stay and continue to press for acceptance of her theory. But he overrode her and drew her with him from the room, and out of the chapel.
Outside, on the short flight of stone steps he smiled bitterly at her, ‘It’s no use, Tildy. You will never persuade them. They do not wish to hear you, or to believe you.’
Tildy was now feeling angry. ‘But why should they behave like that? All I was trying to do was to fight against the cholera, and perhaps save some of their lives. Why should they so deliberately misunderstand what I was saying?’
Before the man could reply, Tildy’s name was shouted, and both turned to see where the voice had come from.
It was Charles Duggins who came hurrying towards them.
‘I was told I’d find you here, Tildy Crawford.
You’d best get home straight off. They’se just brought your man back from his work. The Blue Vomit’s took hold on him … !’