‘In constant fear of some dire epidemic breaking out’: Rural responses to infectious and epidemic disease, 1870–1920

Abstract

Based on extensive archival research encompassing over eighty rural authorities in Wales, this essay pieces together fragmentary evidence to reveal the main contours of rural responses to infectious outbreaks from the 1870s to the 1918/10 influenza pandemic. At the centre of the essay are those practical, short-term measures that have hitherto been overlooked in the historiography. While infectious outbreaks did have the capacity to extend sanitary initiatives over the medium and long term, looking at how rural authorities reacted to infectious disease helps us better understand how public health practices translated into action at a local level. In doing so, the essay untangles both the nature of rural responses and the challenges confronted by rural sanitary officials when confronted with infectious outbreaks and how they had to adapt public health orthodoxy to different rural environments.