Smallpox and scarlet fever seem to be the principal regular visitations in Radcliffe. The Newcastle Courant of June 30 1876 refers to a meeting of the Alnwick Union with regard to sanitary work.
"As a rule the wells and water courses that constitute the supply are polluted with sewage. This latter is an evil of fearful magnitude, and it has proved no easy matter to deal with it. The two evils are combined in a most remarkable manner at Radcliffe Terrace, a pit village near Amble, where there is a very numerous population.
The colliery proprietors allow the inhabitants to use the steam water at the pit, but this is at a considerable distance, and the common drink of the people is from a burn which is polluted with sewage along its course.
Even this burn has now run nearly dry, and they have to buy their water of a person who brings it in a barrel cart from Amble and sells it by the pailful.
Is it to be wondered at that the people here are frequent sufferers from the scourges of smallpox, scarlet fever etc and that there is a perpetual danger of these periodical outbreaks being diffused from Radcliffe Terrace and Amble over the surrounding county."
Looking at Warkworth burials in 1864 it seems that most of the Radcliffe deaths that year were amongst infants and children, with a few teenagers too. It peaked in September, maybe when the burn was getting low?
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