Exhibition examines history of Aberystwyth

Feb 12 2008 by Darren Devine, Western Mail

TODAY it combines the family appeal of a busy seaside resort with an air of intellectual elegance as one of Wales’ main university towns.

But there was a time when Aberystwyth was thrown into the limelight for reasons entirely unconnected to its sweeping promenade or 8,000-strong student population.

In 1946 a typhoid outbreak that started in the town killed four people and left the local hospital unable to cope with the hundreds who fell ill.

And a new exhibition at Ceredigion Museum, in Aberystwyth, brings to life this now largely forgotten aspect of its history.

The display includes items associated with the town brought together by an avid collector of Aberystwyth memorabilia.

For 20 years the late Margaret Evans’s Aberystwyth Yesterday exhibition was displayed in the town’s old railway station and St Paul’s Chapel.

But it was put into storage by Ceredigion Museum when Mrs Evans, OBE, died in 1996 and has been gathering dust ever since.

Now the museum’s curator Michael Freeman has been delving into Mrs Evans’s long-forgotten collection to create a new exhibition of the items.

The display Hidden Treasures shows highlights from Mrs Evans’s original exhibition chosen by Ceredigion Museum staff.

Mr Freeman chose to feature an ice cream cart in the exhibition because one of these was linked to the typhoid outbreak.

The disease was traced to a Bitchell’s ice cream cart – not the one featured in the exhibition – after the outbreak took hold in the summer of 1946.

It was the first visitor season after the war and the town was looking forward to reasserting its credentials as a leading holiday resort, but the typhoid outbreak undermined these efforts.

At the time one national newspaper carried the banner headline “Typhoid Town” above a story covering the infection.

Mr Freeman said, “It has been said that this (outbreak) was caused by the use of dirty dish-cloths, but it appears that Bitchell’s power supply failed and they were unable to heat up the cream properly before freezing it.

“Up to 210 people contracted the disease and four died. The resulting bad national publicity reduced the number of visitors to Aberystwyth that summer and the following year.”

Ceredigion county archivist Helen Palmer said the outbreak was a major event in the town’s post-war history. She said, “It was quite a big deal, because it wasn’t just restricted to Aberystwyth.

“Imagine 210 cases of typhoid in any small Welsh town anywhere – it was quite a lot.

“Of those 75 were from outside Aberystwyth because there were people who had come to the seaside for the day, eaten some ice cream, gone home and then became ill.”

When the numbers began to mount up other Welsh hospitals agreed to take some of the patients – a generous gesture considering the potentially lethal and highly contagious nature of the disease.

But the exhibition offers far more than just clues to a single episode in Aberystwyth’s post-war history.

Mrs Evans was especially attracted to clothes and accessories and the new display includes a small selection of the 400 hats and many dresses in her collection.

Mary Turner Lewis, who has worked within the museum’s textiles collection for several years, chose the hats.

She said, “Hats were worn to show the wearer’s occupation, authority, rank and social standing, or in the case of the many women’s black hats, to show that they were in mourning. Most of the hats date from the mid 19th century to the 1950s when hats began to lose their importance and popularity.

“The dresses illustrate the diversity of the changing fashions that accompanied the 19th and 20th century together with the changing roles of women in society.”

Other items on show include a Ferguson radio, a wicker bath chair, which might have been used on Aberystwyth promenade, a collection of 1920s and 30s ceramics by Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper and some decorative fans.

The exhibition opens at the Coliseum & Ceredigion Museum on Saturday and runs until April 19