8 December 1770: The Rev Henry Venn’s heart and lungs require removal from polluted Huddersfield to Cambridgeshire
John Venn. 1904. Annals of a Clerical Family. London: Macmillan. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
It is a happy circumstance for me, since even you and all my dear friends in Yorkshire seem determined to place my removal to a lucrative motive, that the living I am going to will not suffer any such construction, nor will my circumstances be at all materially mended by it. But this does not in the least affect me, because I plainly perceive, every time I preach, how much I am hurt, and the very last time I preached in Bath chapel I had such a palpitation of heart (a thing I never had before) as soon as I sat down in the chair, as made me ready to faint away. This and many other symptoms I feel, but, because I am cheerful and ride about, my Yorkshire friends, through their affection for me, make little of the matter; and as Mrs. Jones expressed it, she said if she were one of the Huddersfield congregation she had sooner see me drop down dead than leave the place. I feel very sensibly what a total change in my condition this event will bring about; and if I seem to consult flesh and blood, there are many more comforts in Huddersfield than at Yelling. Do not you believe I enjoy the Word of God, the House of God, the Table of God, and the Ministers of God? and where are they to be enjoyed in that degree they are at Huddersfield? What is a little church with at most a hundred people? What is a small solitary village? What is the Lord’s Table, with perhaps twenty communicants, with what I have for near twenty years been used to? Only renew my strength and make me in any degree capable of the labour of my much-loved post, and I will be bound to strive rather than leave it.
[A later letter:]
Nothing would have prevailed on me to leave Huddersfield if my lungs had not received an irreparable injury, of which I am more sensible, by several symptoms, than ever. Looking upon my dissolution as at no great distance, I go to Yelling as a dying man.
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Comment
In terms of his illness, what has Yelling got that Huddersfield hasn’t? Clean air? Josiah Bateman wrote a century later that the vicarage
was a very old building, in the worst part of the town, with a garden attached, in which nothing green would grow. Close by, a large, old-fashioned inn was standing, which in times past had been built upon the glebe, and now paid a good rent to the vicar. But all was hemmed in by tall chimneys and wretched buildings; and the house proved on trial an unhealthy residence. Again and again, one and another of my family was attacked with illness; again and again we were invited by kind parishioners to make their handsome houses in the outskirts our home for weeks together. But this could not last; and before a year had elapsed, a decision was required whether we should leave or stay; and that turned upon the retention of the old house, or the erection of a new one. I called a meeting in the vestry, and proposed the question with all simplicity. It was responded to with Yorkshire liberality and kindliness; and in the result a beautiful paddock of two acres and more, just outside the town, was exchanged (the exchange being legally necessary) for an equal quantity of glebe land, covered with gorse, five miles away; and two thousand two hundred pounds were raised to build a handsome Gothic vicarage (Bateman 1880).
But how dirty was the Industrial Revolution in Huddersfield at the time of Venn?
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Tags
Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- Air pollution (13) W/G ·
- Bateman, Josiah (ca. 1802-93) (1), clergyman and writer W/G ·
- Bath, Somerset (3) W/G ·
- Cambridgeshire (3) W/G ·
- Cardiovascular disease (1) W/G ·
- Horse (72) W/G ·
- 📌Huddersfield (29) W/G ·
- Industrial Revolution (22) W/G ·
- Pollution (10) W/G ·
- Pulmonary heart disease (1) W/G ·
- West Riding of Yorkshire (151) W/G ·
- Yelling, Cambridgeshire (1) W/G ·
Comment
Comment
In terms of his illness, what has Yelling got that Huddersfield hasn’t? Clean air? Josiah Bateman wrote a century later that the vicarage
was a very old building, in the worst part of the town, with a garden attached, in which nothing green would grow. Close by, a large, old-fashioned inn was standing, which in times past had been built upon the glebe, and now paid a good rent to the vicar. But all was hemmed in by tall chimneys and wretched buildings; and the house proved on trial an unhealthy residence. Again and again, one and another of my family was attacked with illness; again and again we were invited by kind parishioners to make their handsome houses in the outskirts our home for weeks together. But this could not last; and before a year had elapsed, a decision was required whether we should leave or stay; and that turned upon the retention of the old house, or the erection of a new one. I called a meeting in the vestry, and proposed the question with all simplicity. It was responded to with Yorkshire liberality and kindliness; and in the result a beautiful paddock of two acres and more, just outside the town, was exchanged (the exchange being legally necessary) for an equal quantity of glebe land, covered with gorse, five miles away; and two thousand two hundred pounds were raised to build a handsome Gothic vicarage (Bateman 1880).
But how dirty was the Industrial Revolution in Huddersfield at the time of Venn?
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Comment
The Commissioners of Patents’ Journal records the seal on 1873/09/16 for:
1081 MARTIN TOBIN, of Leeds, in the county of York, Gentleman, for an invention of “An improved means or mode of ventilating rooms or apartments and in the apparatus employed therefor.” Dated 24th March, 1873. (Patent Office 1873/09/16)
I can’t find the volume for the first half of 1873.
John Whitehurst came to similar conclusions in the late 18th century (Whitehurst 1794).
I am sure that the devil was in the detail, but how good were Tobin’s Tubes really?
The Tobin tube (a vertical shaft, open at the top, and communicating with the outside at the base) was popular in Victorian times (c 1878). One such had a water trough at the base of the shaft, ostensibly to trap dust from the incoming air. The Tobin tube was not a success and, shortly after its introduction, Edwards stated flatly that either the free area was too small or the incoming air immediately spilled over the top onto the floor. Worse, the provision of lids meant that all too often they were permanently closed. Yet the Tobin tube remained in use for 30 years or more, and was even recommended by an early 20th century architect.
[…]
In 1894, Professor Jacob, a pathologist, held the architect in contempt:
In most cases architects are content to introduce an occasional air brick or a patented device called a “ventilator” … Real ventilation is so uncommon that the architect usually thinks this object has been attained if some of the windows can be opened. Some think that the presence of “ventilators”, especially if they have long names and are secured by Her Majesty’s letters patent, ensures the required end. We may as well supply our house with water by making the trap door in the roof to admit rain.
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