From 1884 onwards, Britain experienced a series of major droughts, which reached their peak in the ‘Long Drought’ (1890–1909). Despite being imagined as a wet part of the world, rural Wales was hard hit as many communities did not have access to reliable water supplies. As medical officers of health and newspapers talked about water famines, alarm focused on questions of purity and disease as drought was presented as a serious health risk. Using rural Wales as a case study, this essay explores vulnerabilities to water scarcity during periods of drought to examine the material and socio-political impact of water scarcity and the resulting public health problems faced in rural areas. In addressing how droughts in rural communities were physical and social phenomena that generated considerable alarm about infectious disease, this essay also reveals how periods of water scarcity were an important determinant in improvements to rural water provision.
...More
Article
Taylor, Vanessa;
Chappells, Heather;
Medd, Will;
Trentmann, Frank;
(2009)
Drought Is Normal: The Socio-Technical Evolution of Drought and Water Demand in England and Wales, 1893--2006
(/isis/citation/CBB001034156/)
Thesis
James, Tricia;
(2007)
Rural Industrialisation, Urbanisation and Infant Mortality in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, 1879--1910: A Vaccination Register Study
(/isis/citation/CBB001562755/)
Article
Langford, Christopher;
(2002)
The Age Pattern of Mortality in the 1918--19 Influenza Pandemic: An Attempted Explanation Based on Data for England and Wales
(/isis/citation/CBB000200378/)
Article
Levene, Alysa;
(2009)
Between Less Eligibility and the NHS: The Changing Place of Poor Law Hospitals in England and Wales, 1929--39
(/isis/citation/CBB001030549/)
Book
Brunton, Deborah;
(2008)
The Politics of Vaccination: Practice and Policy in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, 1800--1874
(/isis/citation/CBB000830841/)
Book
Barbara Barksdale Clowse;
(2020)
A Doctor for Rural America: The Reforms of Frances Sage Bradley
(/isis/citation/CBB837947269/)
Book
Campkin, Ben;
Cox, Rosie;
(2007)
Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination
(/isis/citation/CBB001031281/)
Chapter
Opitz, Donald L.;
(2011)
Cultivating Genetics in the Country: Whittingehame Lodge, Cambridge
(/isis/citation/CBB001231556/)
Book
Constantin Bărbulescu;
(2019)
Physicians, Peasants, and Modern Medicine: Imagining Rurality in Romania, 1860-1910
(/isis/citation/CBB503754124/)
Article
Gregory, Ian N.;
Henneberg, Jordi Martí;
(2010)
The Railways, Urbanization, and Local Demography in England and Wales, 1825--1911
(/isis/citation/CBB001231856/)
Book
Del Cura, María Isabel;
Huertas, Rafael;
(2007)
Alimentación y enfermedad en tiempos de hambre. España, 1937--1947
(/isis/citation/CBB001022347/)
Article
Hionidou, Violetta;
(2009)
“It was a bridge from life to death”: Hospitals during the Food Crisis, Greece 1941--1944
(/isis/citation/CBB000932800/)
Article
Pedgley, D. E.;
(2002)
A Short History of the British Rainfall Organization
(/isis/citation/CBB001321066/)
Book
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds;
(2015)
Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan
(/isis/citation/CBB620201368/)
Article
Arrizabalaga, Jon;
Sánchez-Martínez, Guillermo;
(2014)
El socorro humanitario en tiempo de paz: divergencias iniciales en el movimiento internacional de la Cruz Roja, 1867--1884
(/isis/citation/CBB001450512/)
Book
John Crowley;
William J. Smyth;
Mike Murphy;
(2012)
Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
(/isis/citation/CBB381920737/)
Chapter
Jordan, William Chester;
(2010)
The Great Famine: 1315--1322 Revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB001420422/)
Article
Moon, Mira;
(2014)
A Comparative Study on Koii (Public Doctor) System and Its Effect on Public Health in Colonial Taiwan and Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB001422420/)
Article
Szreter, Simon;
(2014)
The Prevalence of Syphilis in England and Wales on the Eve of the Great War: Re-visiting the Estimates of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases 1913--1916
(/isis/citation/CBB001550930/)
Article
John Lidwell-Durnin;
(2020)
Cultivating Famine: Data, Experimentation and Food Security, 1795–1848
(/isis/citation/CBB716736744/)
Be the first to comment!