Sarah Evans was landlady of the Nag’s Head Inn from 1851 until 1859. |
First Report of the Metropolitan Sanitary Commission (1848) - Housing of the Poor |
"It is the general practice to condemn the poor for the filthy state of their dwellings, in sweeping accusations that, "the poor are naturally dirty;" that, "they love dirt," and would not, if they could, be clean. ... The dwellings of the poor, in this parish, are, with very few exceptions, destitute of most of those structural conveniences common to the better classes of houses.... The privies (where there are any attached) are either close to the houses, or at a distance from it, exposed to the public view, or common to large numbers of houses and families. There are never any sinks. The fire-places are constructed without the slightest regard to the convenience or comfort of the inmates, and are altogether unadapted to successfully fulfil the purposes for which they were intended. ...
I found the air in the rooms of the poor, so saturated with putrescent exhalations, that to breathe it was to inhale a dangerous, perhaps fatal, poison. ...
The families occupying these houses are far from well, that one, in particular, has frequently been visited with fevers, and illness, during the last six years, and that the mother and eldest child, have died in consequence; that the smells were so intolerable that the doors and windows required to be frequently opened, and that the walls are soaked with the damp from the drains."
For more excerpts from the sanitary report click here or the posters above. |
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| click here to read about water and gas supply and the introductions of toilets to the Nag's Head Yard. |
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Sarah Evans was born in Lydbury, near Bishop’s Castle. Here she married James Evans, and moved with him to Ludlow where the couple went into service, working for a bank clerk.
By 1851, James and Sarah had taken on the Nag’s Head Inn. It's highly likely that they were the first licensees accredited under the sign of the Nag’s Head.
In 1854, cholera swept the country and Ludlow did not avoid the epidemic. Sarah nursed her family through the attack but on the 7th September, James died.
Dr John Snow’s groundbreaking work during the 1854 cholera epidemic is well known. Until that time it was thought the disease transmitted as a miasma in the air, could not be stopped. And, that once caught, there was no cure. John Snow changed all this. He noticed that cholera deaths were focused on particular districts. In London, he investigated who had used water from the Broad (now Broadwick) Street pump, and when they’d used it. He developed the theory that cholera was a disease found in contaminated water. On 7th September 1854 – the day James Evans died at the Nag’s Head – Dr Snow went to the London authorities and asked for the handle to be taken off the Broad Street pump and so put it out of action. As a result, the following day, whilst Sarah was mourning the loss of her husband, the handle was removed. The incidences of cholera in the area immediately began to tail off. Further investigations revealed that the water from the pump had indeed been contaminated with raw sewerage.
The open sewer in Nag's Head Yard is still visible today. The location of the nearest water supply, probably a standpipe on the road, is not known, but leakage of the sewers into the drinking water was common.
When James died, Sarah continued to run the Nag’s Head for some time. Eventually, she moved on, and spent her last years working as a nurse at Hereford hospital.
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