Diptheria

Photographed by PE Brown, the church of St Mary, Wymeswold, c.1906. Photo courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Interviewer: Diptheria, was it an epidemic in the village?

Mrs Smith: Yes, we all had it but my sister Florrie, six of us had it, even my baby brother. A cousin had it, and there was another family had it, and there were two children on our street had it which died. And yet my mother had five of us, six of us with it and we all got over it.

Interviewer: Can you remember what year that would be then?

Mrs Smith: Well I would be 13 then, so, yes I was 13 and I’m 79 now, so it was er…

Interviewer: 1920?

Mrs Smith: Yes, something like that.

Interviewer: Was it quite common to have epidemics in the village?

Mrs Smith: Yes, oh yes. I think we children, being seven children we always seemed to get whatever was going. Another family in the village, they’d got ten children, well you’d got more chances hadn’t you then, of getting these diseases. Scarlet fever, we all had scarlet fever.

Interviewer: Did you have to go away?

Mrs Smith: No, no, in those days they just put you in a room, all of us, I think then it was five of us, my youngest brother wasn’t born then, and we were in the one room and then my mother caught it, she caught the scarlet fever. It was fun you know, we used to have to strip the walls, because of the – how they used to fumigate afterwards – and we wrote things on the walls, you know, I often think the people that live in that house now, when they strip the walls they’ll see some drawings.

Interviewer: When the person came to fumigate then, you had to have all the wallpaper off the walls?

Mrs Smith: Yes, ready, and we burnt it all. Yes, we were isolated for six weeks with scarlet fever whereas now it’s only a fortnight, and for diphtheria I think it was eight weeks we were isolated.

Interviewer: Was there ever any polio in the village?

Mrs Smith: Yes, there was a little girl named Monica Harris, she had polio, that’s the only one I can ever, that I can think of that had polio.

Interviewer: So there was no real sort of epidemic in the village?

Mrs Smith: No, no, not in the village but surrounding villages had the odd one, and the towns, we could hear of friends and relations in the towns having polio.

©EMOHA