Hi List and welcome back Roy........ Never did wave to me from that train AND I looked for you!!!!!!! My Dad was born in 1918 in Sheffield, one of a large family of 11 two of these little children died during the 1918 flu epidemic, not as you might think from the flu. One died with the flu and the other little girl came downstairs and her nightie caught fire, both died within a few days of each other.............so even in the 20th century, it did not need an epidemic. How heartbreaking for my Grandmother to have lost two of her children so tragically and so very close together. Warmest Wishes Jan in Bronte Country List admin ENG-YKS-Bradford. List admin Clewer surname OPC- Keighley-one-place-study. AVG updated daily > THERE didn't have to be an epidemic for two children from the same > family to die in the same year. It happened all the time in the 19th > century, when the vast majority of working families lived in > wretched conditions, the air in industrial towns was foul, disease > was rife and public health planning was unknown. > > Bradford in 1848 was described as the filthiest town he had ever > visited by a health inspector. The booming Industrial Revolution had > its downside in the greed of the millowners who treated their > workers as slaves, forcesd them to work for long hours in appalling > conditions and turned the city into a stinking, smoke-laden slum. > There was no medical treatment as we know it today and open sewers > ran in the streets. Child mortality was astronomical, which is why > most Victorians had large families in the hope that one or two might > survive. > > No, you don't need to look for epidemics to explain two children > dying in the same family! Many would lose three or four within a few > months. > >