The letters keep giving.

Dr. Emmeline Furness has now assessed eighteen of the approximately forty documents discovered behind a false wall panel in the old Meredith & Blackwell warehouse on Harker Street. The first twelve, examined last week, yielded the first eyewitness account of the 1859 dockworkers’ fever — a devastating epidemic that killed between sixty and eighty people and was previously known only from parish death registers.

Letters thirteen through eighteen, assessed this week at Dr. Furness’s office at Bobington Polytechnic, contain something potentially more significant: clear references to a second episode of fever in November 1860.

“Josiah Meredith writes to his business partner on the fourteenth of November, 1860, that ‘the sickness has returned to the grain sheds,’” Furness said. “He uses the phrase ‘the same affliction as last year’s visitation.’ He describes men unable to work, wagons standing idle, and a decision to close two of his warehouses until the outbreak passes.”

A subsequent letter, dated 3 December 1860, reports that the warehouses have reopened and that “the worst appears to have passed, though four men are not yet returned.”

Not One Epidemic but a Pattern

The 1859 dockworkers’ fever has been understood — to the limited extent it has been studied — as a single catastrophic event: a concentrated outbreak that killed dozens of dockworkers over several weeks in the summer of 1859, likely caused by contaminated water or close-quarters living conditions near the quays.

The discovery of a second outbreak, fifteen months later, in the same area and described in the same terms, suggests a different interpretation.

“If the fever recurred, it was not a single epidemic,” Furness said. “It was a recurring hazard. Endemic, not episodic. That changes what we understand about working conditions at the docks in this period. These men were not struck by one disaster. They were living and working in conditions that produced disease repeatedly.”

Furness cautioned that the evidence remains fragmentary. The Meredith letters are personal correspondence, not medical records. The death toll of the 1860 outbreak is not specified, and the phrase “four men are not yet returned” may indicate deaths, long-term illness, or simply workers who found employment elsewhere.

“We are reading one man’s account of events he observed from his office window and his counting house,” she said. “It is invaluable, and it is incomplete.”

The Quay Drawing

Among the documents assessed this week, Furness also found a rough architectural drawing — pen on linen — showing the layout of the original quay as it stood in approximately 1859. The drawing, apparently made by Meredith himself, depicts the positions of the grain sheds, the timber yard, the customs house, and what is labelled “the fever ward” — a detail that corroborates the ward’s existence and provides the first indication of its precise location.

“The ward is shown behind the easternmost grain shed, between the quay wall and what appears to be a drainage channel,” Furness said. “It is remarkably close to the area where the Lower Conduit — the buried waterway discovered by Miss Strand — runs beneath the Docklands. Whether there is a connection between the waterway and the disease is speculation at this stage, but the proximity is notable.”

The drawing has been photographed and will be included in Furness’s formal report.

Heritage Listing

The Bobington Historical Preservation Society has formally submitted a heritage listing application for the Meredith & Blackwell warehouse to the Municipal Heritage Committee. Chairwoman Louisa Marchbank confirmed on Thursday that the application cites both the architectural significance of the 1856 building and the historical importance of the documents found within it.

Demolition remains suspended pending the assessment. Greystone Development Ltd, which acquired the property, has not commented publicly on the listing application.

Furness expects to complete her assessment of the remaining twenty-two letters within the next three weeks. She has been invited to present her findings at the Bobington Polytechnic spring exhibition in April — an event that will also feature Oswin Faraday’s mechanical model of the city.

“Every letter I open is a window into a world we thought we knew,” Furness said. “We didn’t. We knew the outline. Josiah Meredith is giving us the detail.”