Smallpox In Milnrow

New Ladyhouse Mill was built in 1879, one of the biggest employers in Milnrow it became the scene of an outbreak of smallpox in 1914.

During the afternoon of Saturday 30th May 1914, a 21 year old worker from the mill was found to be suffering from smallpox.

With Milnrow operating under its own urban district council, there was no provision with the area for anyone suffering from smallpox to be treated, a call was put out to the neighbouring Littleborough, Milnrow and Wardle joint hospital near Hollingworth Lake (the gates to the old hospital can still be seen at the end of Wildhouse Lane as it become Milnrow Road), the local government board had stated however that nobody from smallpox would be treated at that hospital, as a general rule stated that there must not be any other buildings within a quarter mile of any hospital treating people with the disease.

The local doctor in Milnrow, Dr. Chadwick together the the UDC sanitary inspector eventually cajoled the management of Maryland hospital to admit a number of smallpox cases from Milnrow.

The young man from Minrow was taken there for treatment, later the same day another male and a female suffering from the disease were also taken to Marland.

The situation didn't get any better as on Sunday, the number of sufferers increased, another male and two females were rushed to the hospital, followed on Monday by more infected people, the hospital at Marland soon became full and arrangements were made to take any further cases to the joint smallpox hospital in Heywood and Bury.

All but one of the patients were employed at New Ladyhouse Mill in the village.

The source of the outbreak was narrowed down to a bale of cotton that had travelled to Milnrow from Mexico, 2 further bales from the same shipment had been delivered to other mills in Rochdale, these however didn't cause any issues for the workers at those mills.

Discussions were held with the management of New Ladyhouse Mill and a decision taken to close the mill until June 9th, this clearly would have affected the 200 people working in the mill which had 19,000 ring spindles and 3,600 doubling spindles.

Dr. Chadwick was interviewed regarding the outbreak, he stated that in 40 years he had only seen 6 cases of smallpox, a surprising figure he mentioned was that 75% of the children in Milnrow were not vaccinated against the disease, as you can imagine as a result of the outbreak there was a run on vaccinations in the doctors surgeries in the village !