Articles

This article (by Ian Miller) uses original oral history interviews by Rhianne Morgan, of the Epidemic Belfast team, and oral histories published in David Hammond’s 1986 book, Steelchest, Nail in the Boot and the Barking Dog, to bring to life harrowing experiences of injury and health in the shipyards involving exposure to life-changing injuries, asbestos and poor health prospects.Listen to...

By Ian Miller, Ulster University In  the mid-1970s, the force-feeding of Northern Irish prisoners led the World Medical Association (WMA) to establish stricter guidance on how doctors respond to hunger strikes. Force-feeding, always considered an ethically dubious practice, had been used in British and Irish prisons since the suffragette hunger strikes of 1909-14. The WMA criticised doctors who force-fed for...

By Ian Miller, Ulster University The experiences of pregnant women, and those going through childbirth is hard to find in the archives. However, in 1992, the Women’s Committee of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) produced a short book of oral histories that recorded Northern Irish women’s experience of health across the twentieth century. Mary Ferris, Anna McGonigle, Belfast...

It had once been easy to ignore the slums scattered across Belfast’s destitute working class areas, and the dismal, unhygienic conditions which the poorest lived in. The destruction of working-class housing made the problems afflicting these previously hidden communities visible, exposing Belfast’s concealed shame. Poverty and unemployment had deepened during the 1930s, a decade of global economic recession. Houses were...

In the weeks after Easter Tuesday, deliveries of basic foodstuffs such as milk and bread stopped. Shopkeepers shut their premises and fled to the safety of the countryside. Water was contaminated by sewage pollution. The Army brought potable water to distribution points; wardens helped carry supplies to elderly people. Toilets were not to be used because of sewer pipe damage,...

Before the Blitz, emergency planners had estimated that Belfast’s mortuary services would need to cope with around 200 bodies at worst. On the night of the 15th, the number of corpses at the Mater alone amounted to 80. The bodies, or what remained of them (which wasn’t always very much), overspilled into the hospital’s back yard. A strong smell of...

The Germans targeted Belfast only four times, but the raids had a huge impact on a relatively small-sized city. A small bombing raid took place on the night of 7-8 April, perhaps a test run, followed by a larger assault on the evening of Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941. A third raid took place on 4-5 May 1941 which saw...

In the Second World War (1939-45), Éire remained neutral. Northern Ireland, formally part of the British jurisdiction, took to arms. Historians describe the conflict as ‘total war’, a type of warfare that targets and involves civilians, as well as soldiers. Since the First World War (1914-18), aircraft technologies had developed rapidly. By the 1930s, it was clear that aircraft would...

By Caitlin Smith, Ulster University During the early decades of the twentieth century, local and state governments became increasingly concerned with the regulation of midwifery both in Ireland and Britain. This grew from a fear that uncontrolled midwifery practices increased infant mortality rates. Handywomen - women who offered their services during childbirth despite having no formal qualifications - were used...

by Rebecca Brown, Ulster University Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is an infection which attacks the body’s immune system and, if left untreated, will severely damage the individual’s immune system.[1] In the final stage of the HIV infection, an infected individual will develop Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) making them susceptible to serious infections and rare cancers.[2] HIV is spread by unprotected...

by Ian Miller, Ulster University In the early years of the Troubles, some Northern Irish doctors began to worry that conflict was causing psychological and emotional problems. Alex Lyons, a Purdysburn Hospital doctor, investigated a period of rioting in West Belfast in August and September 1969, a time of arson, looting and intimidation that helped consolidate Catholic-Protestant segregation. Lyons noted...

By Ruth Coon, Queen’s University Belfast The Troubles (1968-1998) created a complex work environment for healthcare staff in Northern Ireland. They experienced challenges to their neutrality and medical ethics, as well as threats and dangers at work. In my research, a number of medical staff who worked at various hospitals across Northern Ireland were interviewed about their experiences during the...

by Hannah Brown and Rebecca Brown, Ulster University The thalidomide tragedy is one of the worst medical scandals in history.[1] Thalidomide was advertised as an extraordinary drug which could be used to treat a plethora of problems including depression, colds, anxiety, insomnia and headaches.[2] Thalidomide was also effective in alleviating morning sickness in pregnant women. It was developed in 1954,...

by Hannah Brown, Ulster University Poliomyelitis merges three Greek words, ‘polio,’ ‘myelo,’ and ‘itis,’ which translates respectively to ‘grey matter’, ‘spinal cord’ and ‘swelling’.[1] Poliomyelitis is often referred to as polio or infantile paralysis. The highly contagious disease is spread faecal-orally and is caused by a wild-type polio virus type 1, 2 or 3.[2] Polio attacks a person’s nervous system,...

by Ian Miller, Ulster University Belfast Health Week In June 1933, Ulster Hall hosted an event named Belfast Health Week. The Week was intended to ‘impress upon the general public the social and individual importance of hygiene, emphasizing the positive benefits of health rather than the negative results of disease’. Through films, lectures and exhibits, visitors learnt about the healthiest...

By Patricia Marsh, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland The 1918-19 influenza pandemic struck in three concurrent waves throughout the world. Ireland was no exception.  As many as 23,000 Irish people may have died from influenza and there were approximately 7,500 deaths in Ulster.[1] By 1918, Belfast was Ireland’s most industrial city and, as elsewhere in the world, there were...

by Michael Robinson, University of Liverpool The conditions of modern warfare calling large numbers of men into action, the tremendous endurance, physical and mental, required, and the widely destructive effect of modern artillery fire will undoubtedly make their influence felt in a future war, and we shall have to deal with a larger percentage of mental disease than hitherto. A.G....

by Ian Miller, Ulster University No matter how apparently flourishing a city may be, its merchants thriving and its artisans well employed, it cannot be said to be happy or prosperous when sickness is prevalent; when its deaths-rate is excessive; when, in fact, its very prosperity is founded on the life blood of its people…we have not only the ignorance...

By Tom Thorpe, Independent In August 1913, Dr H.W. Baillie, Belfast's Medical Superintendent Officer of Health delivered his report on the city’s public health for the previous year. During 1912, Belfast reported its second lowest death rate ever but he noted that around 650 children had died from the seven ‘zymotic’ (infectious) diseases such as whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever...

by Ian Miller, Ulster University In 1881, a disagreement erupted between the Board of Guardians and a Belfast man named Thomas Strain. Since 1864, the Guardians had been tasked with vaccinating infants and children against smallpox. The government had made vaccination compulsory, but Thomas was adamant that his child would not be jabbed without his permission. Enforced vaccination, he believed,...

by Emeritus Professor Greta Jones, Ulster University At the time of writing, we are now in the middle of a COVID epidemic. A hundred years ago, another epidemic affected the lives (and deaths) of millions of people in the world. This was tuberculosis, a disease caused by a bacteria which, like COVID, spread from person to person by inhalation of...

by Nigel Farrell, Ulster University I feel persuaded that epidemic diseases are not the necessary heritage of mankind. Like other terrestrial phenomena, they have certain causes or precursors. It is frequently a difficult problem to ascertain what these are, although it is a matter of the utmost importance to do so; for without a knowledge of this kind, how can...

by Ian Miller, Ulster University In 1872, an alarmed lady wrote to the Freeman’s Journal reporting that: Taking shelter in a cottage, near Banbridge, County Down, some time ago, during a shower of rain, and noticing the teapot on the hob, I observed that tea stewed in that way did a great deal of harm. The woman who lived in the cottage...

By Michael Kinsella, Ulster University Scotland’s nineteenth-century chartered asylums had philanthropic roots and developed very differently from the Irish district asylum system. They were not designated as pauper institutions and due to their charitable foundations were profoundly influenced by their relationship with the ‘urban Scottish middle class’.[1] They were also progressive by the standards of Victorian era public institutions in...

By Rebecca Watterson, Ulster University In 1829, the Belfast District Lunatic Asylum opened following the 1821 Lunacy (Ireland) Act which provided the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with the ability to establish funded district asylums for the lunatic poor.[1] In January 1826, ‘wanted’ adverts were placed in the Belfast Newsletter by surgeon Robert Mcluney seeking a site on which to build...

by Eugenie Scott, Ulster University Until the mid-nineteenth century, Belfast was a small market town. However, from the 1840s factories and mills sprang up. The growing town soon became known for its linen industry and shipbuilding. At the time, many British doctors blamed industrialisation for the spread of non-infectious diseases including cancer. Often, their writings provided a commentary on rapidly...