"johnhooper@ansonic.com.au" <johnhooper@ansonic.com.au> wrote..... > Two children from the same family died in 1847. Does anyone know if there was an epidemic in Allerton at that time, please?> 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. Roy Stockdill (Editor, Journal of One-Name Studies) SoG Executive & Director of Projects, FFHS Guild of One-Name Studies:- www.one-name.org Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:- www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you, if he does not why humiliate him? - Canon Sydney Smith