Part 4

The manuscript above quoted, making the last Chester outbreak to have occurred in 1550, places the first in 1506. If we believe these annals to be incorrectly dated by a year, in that case the true date of the earlier visitation will be 1507, as given by several writers. The affirmation of Caius, that the disease appeared at Westchester (the old name for Chester) in 1551, favours this assumption. On the other hand, the Vale Royal, Ormerod, Hemingways and Lysons all agree in stating that 1550 was the year in which the town was severely visited by the malady. Whichever view we take, it would appear that one of the Chester visitations must have occurred in a year (1507 or 1550) not marked by a general epidemic, unless we gratuitously fix a charge of incorrectness on the early local annalists.

It was a fatal inflammatory fever, followed in the survivors by loss of hair and nails, and dropsical effusions.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: italics.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.