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Cholera in Swansea - Greenhill in the 1830s
[ Up ] [ Cholera in Swansea - Greenhill in the 1830s ] [ A Cholera Chronology ] [ A typical toilet or closet of the 1850s in Swansea ] [ An 1880s Swansea water closet (or WC) ] [ Water in nineteenth century Swansea ] [ Food in nineteenth century Swansea ] [ The streams of Swansea ]
| The map below shows the Greenhill area of north
Swansea as it must have appeared in the 1830s. Lots of very poor quality
housing was built here in the 1820s and 1830s to house the large numbers
of new immigrants coming to Swansea to work in the industries of Hafod and
the Lower Swansea Valley.
Although the houses were new they were built
very cheaply e.g. very thin slates on the roofs that would break easily.
There were no rules about building toilets (privvies), drains or
pavements. Although most of the houses had only three or four rooms they
may have held as many as thirty people. Most of the streets would be mud
in the wet weather or fine sand-like dust in dry weather. People would get
their water from the many streams that flowed through the area. In wet
weather almost every street would have a stream running through it. Often,
the water carrying with it all the filth and waste that ran off the
rubbish and dung heaps, would flow into the houses.
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| From time to time, people would dig out the contents of the earth
closets or privies and throw them into the streams hoping the water would
carry the filth away. They would also use the streams for their water
supply so they could not avoid infecting themselves with all kinds of
illness. The people that lived here were the poorest in Swansea, so they
couldn't afford coal for their fires, so they would scavenge all around
for wood to burn in the grates of the houses. This meant that the whole
area would be completely empty of trees or large bushes as everything had
been chopped down. The brown areas on the map would be covered with ash,
rags, animal remains (because people would often slaughter pigs in the
street if they had them), bones and toilet waste. The poorest of
Greenhill's residents would scavenge in town for scraps of food or
anything thrown out of the markets such as old potatoes, old fish and
anything else. |
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