Papers relating to Cheshire Board of Health and the Aston family of Cheshire

Box of miscellaneous papers, mainly of Cheshire interest. There are various groupings of material concerning Sir Willoughby Aston (1640-1702), 2nd baronet, as well as other members of the family of Aston of Aston. It also includes material on the establishment of Boards of Health in various Cheshire towns during 1831-32, as a result of a cholera epidemic.

In 1832 a cholera and influenza epidemic reached the British Isles after spreading across Europe from Asia. As a result a Consultative Board of Health was set up, which issued a series of national recommendations in the form of Sanitary Regulations. Later in the year it was replaced by a Central Board of Health which called for the establishment of local boards of health composed of one or more magistrates, a clergyman, a number of substantial householders and one or more medical men.

The local boards appointed district inspectors to report on the food, clothing and bedding of the poor, the ventilation and sanitation of their dwellings, the size of their living space, their means of cleanliness and their habits of temperance. The Boards were to endeavour to remedy such deficiencies as may be found. Over 1,200 local boards were established by Orders in Council.

The collection is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by the John Rylands Library from R.H. Linaker of Rhyl, North Wales, on 14 June 1934.

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan and Jo Humpleby, project archivists, with reference to the entry for 1831 on http://www.chronology.org.uk/.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928-35 (English MS 747).

The JRUL also holds over one hundred deeds and manorial records relating to the Aston family of Aston by Sutton in Cheshire, acquired from R.H. Linaker at the same time (Rylands Charters 2012-2130).

Material relating to the Aston family of Aston can be found in Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies, in particular the Linaker Collection, which was deposited by estate agents Hyde Linaker and Sons in 1957. According to the catalogue of the Linaker Collection, the Aston Hall muniments were dispersed in a number of repositories. The older documents were purchased by the British Museum (now British Library) from the families of Aston and Talbot in 1903 and catalogued there as Add. MSS 36901-36927 and Add. Ch. 47380-53115 . The records considered of insufficient importance remained in the possession of the estate agents, and those records relating to the Norris family of Speke, Lancashire, were sold to Liverpool Public Libraries (see introduction to J.H. Lumby, Calendar of the Norris Deeds, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, volume 93). Around 1949 the remaining documents were purchased from Mr Hyde Linaker by Mr Raymond Richards and are now in the Liverpool University Library. For further information see the National Register of Archives.