Jail Fever

Jail Fever (known also as Putrid or Pestilential Fever) is now considered to be merely a severe form of Typhus Fever (q.v.), and not a distinct disease. At the present time, owing to improved sanitary regulations, this form of disease is almost unknown; but we learn from Howard's Account of the State of Prisons that, in his time, the disease was very frequent in the prisons of England, although unknown in those of the continental countries. In the celebrated Black Assize (q.v.), held at Oxford in 1577, there is no evidence that the disease prevailed among the prisoners, and yet it broke out among the persons present at the trial. So late as May 1750 the lord mayor, an alderman, two judges, most of the jury, and a large number of spectators caught this disease from attending the assizes at the Old Bailey; and many of those who were infected died.