The Cork Street Fever Hospital and typhus epidemics in pre-Famine Dublin

Ciarán McCabe

This book explores the workings of the Cork Street Fever Hospital in Dublin’s south-western quarter in the decades after its opening in May 1804. The foundation of the hospital, its significant role with the wider international fever hospital movement, and its management and financial structures are discussed, as are the experiences both of medical staff (physicians, apothecaries and nurses) and of patients. Through case studies of the fever epidemics of 1817–19 and 1826–7, this book demonstrates that in ‘normal’ times and in times of crisis, the Cork Street Fever Hospital was central to efforts in curtailing the progress of contagion in Dublin city.

Ciarán McCabe lectures in modern Irish history at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Begging, Charity and Religion in Pre-Famine Ireland (Liverpool, 2018) and Dublin and the Great Irish Famine, co-edited with Emily Mark-FitzGerald and Ciarán Reilly (Dublin, 2022), as well as numerous works exploring the social and cultural history of Ireland between the mid eighteenth and mid twentieth centuries. He is a native of County Dublin and lives in rural County Westmeath.