I often wondered why both George and Frances Beaumont at Darton died in 1735 and early 1736 when he was under 40, and she only 31 or 32, and they were hardly living in poverty.
Then I read of an epidemic of smallpox at Nottingham, a place they must have visited. George had spent some of his youth there, in the household of his elder sister Jane, wife of the banker Abel Smith I. Indeed George's brother the clergyman Thomas settled in Nottingham, as did their sister Elizabeth, and the youngest sister remained with the Smiths until her marriage in 1728.
The epidemic that caused a lot of deaths in Nottingham was written about by Charles Deering in a work printed in 1736, An Account of an Improved Method of treating the Small Pocks, by C. Deering MD.
 |
| Printed in Nottingham 1736 |
(Deering also refers to this outbreak in his History of Nottingham “Vetus et Nova” (based on work largely done c.1740)).
This epidemic of smallpox hit Nottingham in 1736, between May and September. But there were deaths from it other parts of the country, a number being reported in 1735.
Quite recently I discovered a notice in a newspaper that made me think of this. A certain Mr Sutton was advertising in Manchester in December 1770 that he was offering inoculations by what he called "a new method." I think this was for smallpox. Mr Sutton said that in the years 67, 68, 69 and 70 he had inoculated over nine thousand patients, and he proceeded to give the names of some of them. The names included:
"Two children of [..blank..] Smith Esq., banker, Nottingham, [and] eight children of the Rev. Mr. Beaumont, at ditto."
(Manchester Mercury & Harrop's General Advertiser, 18 December 1770).
Indeed my direct ancestor George, who was only little when his parents George & Frances of Darton died, who was Rector of St.Nicholas's in Nottingham from the end of 1766, and who was first cousin of the banker Abel Smith II, did have eight children at that time (his youngest was born only in 1772).
The notice doesn't say how the inoculations were administered, but they were not cheap - one to six guineas is what is said.
EMB 24 February 2022
