Hyatt Family Tree

Castleton Marriages 1716 - 1919
DHC Ref: PE/CAS/RE 1/1 Microfilm MIC/R/455

Elizabeth : Castleton Burials 1725 - 1812
DHC Ref: PE/CAS/RE 3/1 & 3/2, Microfilm MIC/R/462

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"A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1"
By Charles Creighton. 1894
There are accounts of epidemics of Typhus, Scarlatina and Diptheria in and around the south west of England raging throughout the late 1740's. As both John and Elizabeth died within a year or so of 1748 maybe it can be assumed they were stricken by one of these outbreaks. There are no specific documented cases in Shepton Mallet, but here a few of the many highlights from the book:

"Huxham's account of the fevers at Plymouth, in Devonshire generally, and in Cornwall about the years 1734-36 is of the first importance. It is highly complex, owing to the prevalence of an affection of the throat, so that one part of the constitution is " anginosc fever". This has been dealt with in the chapter on Scarlatina and Diphtheria.

These fevers are said to have extended to the country parts of Devonshire, after they had ceased in Plymouth, and to Cornwall in August, 1736.

The malignant epidemic seemed to have been brought in by the fleet; it had raged for a long time among the sailors of the fleet lying at Portsmouth, and had destroyed many of them. In March, 1735, it was raging among the lower classes of Plymouth.

P Johnstone's statement that the putrid fever in Worcestershire tn 1752-53 was often complicated with and bore great analogy to the malignant sore-throat is borne out by Huxham's accounts for Plymouth during the same season.

Dr Starr, of Liskeard, calls the Cornish throat-disease the Morbus Stranguiatorius. Writing in January, 1750, he said had raged in several parts of Cornwall " within a few years with great severity*; "Many parishes have felt its cruelty, whole families of children been swept off: few, very few, have escaped.*' Cases given by himself belong to the year 1748; Huxham, who did not meet with it at Plymouth until 1750-51 says that it had been raging with great fatality for a year or two before in and about Lostwithiel and St Austel;

When Huxham came to describe the disease at Plymouth a year or two later, he laid the emphasis on other symptoms than those mostly dwelt on by Starr, describing really a sloughing sore-throat with rash."

"we have instances of smallpox in Blandford, Dorset. Particulars of its smallpox have been given in connexion with general inoculations; here let us note that in this typical market town of 2110 inhabitants (in 1773), the known epidemics were in 1731. 1741, 1753 and 1766 at intervals of ten or a dozen years."