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Unofficial Website
Health, Sanitation & the Water Companies
Odd to think in these days when most of us have running hot and cold water, mains sewerage and the comfort of central heating that only a hundred and fifty years ago there were none of these things. Rotherham in the 1800s was a cramped, smelly, thoroughly unhygienic town. Infant mortality was high, with one in six babies dying within their first year: the annual mortality rate was over 25% and the average age was only 25.
Before 1827 the towns water supply came from springs and wells, though the overflow from the spring on Wellgate which had once washed through the middle of town was culverted in 1750.
In 1791 the water was carried in an aqueduct with access at various points for public use. In 1827 a private company was formed to pump water from Wellgate to service reservoirs at
Quarry Hill and the Crofts. The flow was poor and the pumps could only be worked for a few hours a day. In 1851 the Water Company was able to provide piped water to about half the
houses in Rotherham for a few hours a day. In Masbrough the supply was so bad that people walked into Rotherham to fetch water and carried it back home. Not surprisingly dysentery and
fever were endemic and sickness and diarrhoea widespread in many parts of the town. Cholera was a regular visitor: nursing facilities were primitive and many died. Some were unknown –
two of the gravestones still left in Rotherham churchyard are dedicated to victims of cholera; one of them unknown "Cholera patient died 1832"
. It is nice to know that somebody paid for
his/her funeral. Other victims were buried in the cholera burial ground at East Dene.
So in 1850 the General Board of Health commissioned a report into the sanitary condition of the town. In most of the town the effluent from the privies and the drains had to make its way as best it could down to the river. In the lower part of the town cellars were flooded with foul water. Pigs and other livestock were kept in yards behind the houses.
In 1852 the Rotherham and Kimberworth Local Board of Health was established. It immediately set about improving the town by digging up the streets to lay water pipes, sewers and drains. The Victorians were great builders of such things and in some parts of Rotherham the old Victorian sewers and drains are still being used. The following year the Rotherham and Kimberworth Local Board of Health took over the Water Company and pumping engines were installed on College Fields (present day Frederick Street) to pump the water from new reservoirs at a higher level built at Boston Castle and Kimberworth. New supplies of water were later obtained from reservoirs at Ulley and from Dalton Brook. The Wellgate spring was abandoned in 1894 as the water had become too polluted for public water supply. With a regular supply of clean water and major improvements to the sanitation there were soon dramatic improvements to the health of the town's population.
Within ten years of being set up the Board had also taken over the the Gas Company and the town markets. The Board of Health was the pre-cursor of the Borough Council which was incorporated in 1871.