Smallpox

Smallpox was endemic 18th poor law records have numerous references to people being given support because they had smallpox. There are references to people being inoculated using a small dose of the live virus.

Smallpox may not have had as much change on society as the Black Death but the 1740 list of tenants shows that some people who survived prospered by taking on leases left vacant by the deaths of the previous tenant.