For Television and Film Work
Disease and Illness in the Black Country:
A History.
The research project
The "Black Country": the heavy industrial areas of Staffordshire and Worcestershire - and today comprising the metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton - was the hub of the industrial revolution. So called due to the area being covered in grime from industries and the thousands of chimneys.
Living and working in such an environment severely impacted the underpaid and overworked workers: men, women and children. Unsafe working conditions and practices; overcrowded, poor living conditions; lack of sanitation; insufficient food and little clean drinking water.
The aim of this research project is to examine the history of diseases and illness in the Black Country, and their impact upon the peoples of the towns and villages of the area, both personally and socially. Also the medical- and health-care provision the people experience. Areas which have been overlooked.
Until now.
The results of the ongoing research - which is being conducted independently of any university or museum - can be found in the form of books and articles listed below.
BOOKS
Buboes, Boils and Bellyaches. Essays on Disease and Illness in the Black Country (free to download)
Disease and Illness in The Black Country. Volume 1: Medieval to Early Modern
The Diggum-Uppers: Body Snatching and Grave Robbing in the West Midlands
Quacks and Cures: Quack Doctors and Folk Healing of the Black Country
The Strangling Angel: Diphtheria in the Black Country
ARTICLES
The Tipton Slasher and the Grave Robbers: Fact or fiction? The dissection of a Black Country myth.
Doctor Norris of Stourbridge: The John Snow of the Midlands
The Man Whose Hands and Legs Rotted Off: A Seventeenth Century Case of Necrotizing Fasciitis
Scapegoat! Foreigners and Disease in the Nineteenth Century Industrial Black Country
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