The Pock House
in the 18th and 19th centuries
by Jean Sheehan

These accounts show that a doctor was paid annually to attend the poor in the parish. The figure was agreed in advance and was four and a half guineas in 1784 rising to five guineas by 1793. This figure was to include fractures, physic and attendance for the smallpox in the natural way, and to attend midwifery patients in cases of real necessity. I assume the sum paid was for all the poor of the parish and not just the ones in The Pock House. The sum of ten shillings and sixpence was paid 'to Murton at Wortham with the small pox', in 1784, this was at the time when each parish was responsible for maintaining its own poor, so presumably Murton was living in Wortham, but was still the responsibility of Redgrave.

The house was not always needed for a smallpox sufferer and was let to a tenant. Samuel Coppins rented it in 1804 at a rent of fifty shillings for the year with the proviso that if it was needed for a patient he had to quit the house and be paid a quarter's rent for the inconvenience. Any tenant would have been very wary of returning to the house, after it had been inhabited by someone suffering from smallpox. The clergy found it very difficult to find people prepared to bury fatalities, and they were often buried at night.

By the 1850's the house was let as two properties one to Robert Saunders and one to Rebecca Rose, a widow. The property was in a bad state of repair and John Pearce was asked to give an estimate for the repairs. It was decided that the property was not worth the cost of the repairs, and a meeting was held to decide whether new premises should be erected or the property sold. Mr. Pearce was paid ten shillings for his estimate, and it was decided that the Guardians of the Poor of the Hartismere Union should apply to the Poor Law Commissioners for an order to sell the property.

South Fen House and land was sold at an auction on November 15th 1855 held at The Cross Keys at 9.o'clock in the evening, and was purchased by the executors of the late J. St. Vincent Wilson for fifty six pounds.

A bill had been passed in 1854 that every infant was to be compulsorily vaccinated against smallpox and many people objected to this. Dr. Pearce visited the school in December 1865 and vaccinated all children who had not been vaccinated. Smallpox had virtually died out in young children by the end of the nineteenth century.