Mountain Ash, 1887
I will be writing an article on the outbreak of enteric fever that primarily affected Miskin, Mountain Ash in 1887. In the meantime, I thought I would post this map of the area that formed part of the official report by the Medical Officer of the day.
Miskin, as can be seen, is composed of only a few streets at this time, though it was to grow. Joseph Keating, in his autobiography My Struggle For Life, comments that when he returned to the valley in the early 1900s, to his family home in Newtown on the opposite side of the valley, that he was dismayed to look across the valley to find houses where once there were fields.
Could it be that the areas not affected are just omitted from the map? Therefore the areas look sparser than they actually were?
Hi, Tom,
Thank you for your comment.
The map shows the area at that time and is consistent with both earlier and later maps. For example, the 1884 OS map does not show Victoria Street. A later OS map, 1896, shows the addition of Consort Street and Albert Street. The report itself lists the streets that comprise Miskin at that time, with both affected and non-affected houses. The non-affected houses helped to determine the direction of the investigation into the cause of the epidemic. I hope to provide the report as a PDF copy on this site, copyright allowing, and to summarise the report’s findings.
I am sorry for the delay in replying: health concerns have kept me away from attention to the site and are likely to do so for a while longer.
Dave
silencedharp