The most carefully kept statistics of the sickness and mortality were those by Rogan for the Strabane Dispensary district, and the adjoining manors of the Marquis of Abercorn, for each of which a private dispensary was established under the care of a physician.
Abstract of Returns of the Dispensary district of Strabane, shewing the numbers ill of fever from the commencement of the epidemic in the summer of 1817, till the end of September, 1818, the numbers labouring under the fever at that date, and the mortality caused by the disease (Rogan, p. 72).
Population Ill of Fever Dead Remaining ill
Town of Strabane 3896 639 59 13 Parish of Camus 2384 685 61 37 " " Leek 5092 1462 96 57 " " Urney 4886 1381 86 42 --------------------------------------------- 16,258 4167 302 149
Similar return for those parts of the Marquis of Abercorn's estates not within the Dispensary district:
Ill of fever Manors Population (to Oct. 1818) Dead
Magevelin and} Lismulmughray} 5548 1666 101 Donelong 3126 1217 71 Derrygoon 2568 1215 90 Part of Strabane 2796 990 75 ----------------------------------- Totals 14,038 5088 337
The proportion of attacks in these tables for a part of Tyrone, one-third to one-fourth of the whole population, is believed to have been a fair average for the whole of Ireland. Each attack, with the weakness that it left behind, lasted about six weeks; cases would occur in a family one after another for several months; in some cottages, says Rogan, only the grandmother escaped.
One hundred thousand cases were known to have passed through the hospitals. Harty thought that seven times as many were sick in their cabins or houses, making 800,000 cases in all Ireland in two years; Barker and Cheyne estimated the whole number of cases at a million and a half (1,500,000). The mortality was comparatively small. It comes out greater in the tables for the Strabane district than anywhere else in Ireland except the hospital at Mallow. The following table, compiled by Harty, shows how widely the fatality ranged (if the figures can be trusted), from place to place and from season to season:
Proportions of fatal cases of typhus in the chief hospitals of Ireland 1817, 1818 and 1819 (Harty)[476].