National Heritage Week Dirt, Disease & Death: A tour of Comber's Medical History

Take a walk back in time with Dr Rebecca Watterson and discover how Comber people faced disease, death, and the Doctor! From smallpox to cholera, surgery to quackery, this tour covers birth, death, and everything in between!

This guided tour will tell the stories of those people who lived in this once-rural town learning to face the ever-changing landscape of disease that came with the Industrial Revolution. Disease outbreaks, poverty, and dangerous working conditions were a part of the daily life of the people of Comber.

Without the NHS which did not come into existence until the 1940s, exactly how did this community manage ill health? Where did women give birth? Where did people get their medicine? What diseases were ravaging the town? Did working conditions have an impact on people’s health and illness? What did they die from? Did they have funerals? Did class and economic circumstance have an…