The Deadly Plague In the middle of the 14th century the people of England could have been forgiven for thinking that the fourth horsemen of the apocalypse was riding by, for the country was struck by a dreadful pestilence which had swept Europe from Central Asia.
It arrived on the south coast in the summer of 1348 and began spreading along the roads, lanes and waterways of England. Sunderland is situated at the mouth of the River Wear and is one of the principal waterways in North East England. Two types of pestilence were involved, bubonic and pneumonic plague.
Bubonic plague was spread by rats and its symptoms were purple blotches or buboes which appeared on it's victims, putrefied and then burst. Pneumonic plague was spread by direct contagion, this affected the lungs and was more deadly, often killing within a couple of days. The Black Death killed of at least 20% of England's population. The inhabitants of Sunderland did not escape, the plague arrived in 1349.
Cholera Sunderland became notorious as a result of the Asiatic Cholera outbreak which occurred in late 1831. Sunderland was the first place in Britain affected by this the first such outbreak in the nations history and became an object of much ridicule for the way in which it handled the crisis.
The well known diarist, Charles Greville wrote that! 'The conduct of the people of Sunderland was more suitable to the barbarism of the interior of Africa than to a town in a civilized country. It is probable that the first victim was a river pilot called Robert Henry, but the first person to display the classic symptoms in it's extreme form, severe diarrhea, vomiting and cramp was a 12 year old girl. Isabella Hazard the famous 'Blue Girl' who died on 17th October. Pictured Right.
There were 5344 cases of cholera on Sunderland in 1831 and early 1832 of which 202 ended in death. Understandably the problem was most acute in the parish of Sunderland, 156 of those who perished were residents of the parish. Special ground was set aside in an extension of Bishopwearmouth burial ground on Hind Street near the infirmary for the burial of victims.
Flu The most lethal epidemic to hit Sunderland was surprisingly flu. A deadly strain of influenza appeared in Sunderland in 1918, in less than a week 8,000 cases of the disease had been notified and the following week the death rate was 91.2 per thousand the highest ever recorded in Sunderland.
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