Typhoid Fever: A Raging Epidemic

Article | Updated 7 years ago

The combination of camels, Afghans, half-empty tins, and a mining camp of 10,000 people innocent of sewers or dust-carts forms a unique smell . . . some day this will be altered when a few more people die of typhoid.

Raymond Radcliffe writing of his visit to Kalgoorlie in 1896

Health of town most unsatisfactory. Fever spreading, deaths daily and business threatened.  No sanitary measures enforced or enforceable . . .

Telegram sent to Premier from Progress Committee, 1895

During the 1890s typhoid fever in the Goldfields reached epidemic proportions. An infectious food and water-borne disease, typhoid was linked to poor sanitation, often combined with overcrowding.

‘Instant’ crowded tent towns, unsanitary conditions, and a limited fouled water supply combined with basic health amenities, provided ideal conditions for the spread of the disease. Its greatest impact was during the long, hot summer months. 

In the early years of the epidemic, up to twenty percent of - mostly - healthy young men, died.  Nearly 2000 people in Western Australia were officially recorded as dying of the disease, though the actual number was far greater. Most deaths occurred on the goldfields.  An estimated ten times more people suffered from the disease.  It was the largest episode of epidemic typhoid in Australia’s history.

A gradual decline in cases saw a return to regular levels by 1910.

Here we can get no better accommodation than a collection of hessian tents, unsightly enough to make the heart of a patient fail him as he enters the portals of the ward.

The Hannan’s Herald, 14 September 1895

The risk of death from typhoid was compounded by the lack of hospitals and nurses on the goldfields. When the extent of the emergency was recognised the government provided tents for emergency hospitals.  Many of these became government or government-assisted hospitals.