Mary HOOPER 1849 -1871
The first story I posted on this page, in August 2022, was about the first burial in the People’s Graveyard on 6th November 1871, according to a note written in the margin of the parish burial register: a little girl of three named Emily Shreiber.

I’ve included a photo of that page in the burial register. You’ll see that the burial before Emily’s, on 4th November 1871, was for Mary HOOPER. I haven’t been able to find a stone for Mary, or for her parents who died in July 1871 and April 1879, either in the churchyard or the graveyard. And it is often stones that start my stories for me. But her young age – 22 – and that she, at least according to the burial register, was the last burial in the churchyard prompted me to find out more about her and her family.
(When I say ‘last burial’, I mean the last ‘new plot’. Many people have, of course, been buried in the churchyard since November 1871 although they would have been interred in existing family or allocated plots. And there’s also the one Portland CWGC stone there too.)
Mary HOOPER was baptised at St Mary’s on 14th October 1849. She was the daughter of Thomas HOOPER, originally from Llanelly, and Margaret SAVOURS, of Aberafan who were married at St Mary’s on 5th March 1839.
The Savours family were well known in Aberafan. Margaret’s father, Jenkin Savours, was the landlord of The Globe Hotel for around 45 years, running it right up until he died in 1854 at the age of 87! He even had a field named after him: Savours Field, previously known as Belli Y Castell, on the site of the long gone Aberafan Castle[i].
Mary HOOPER was the sixth of eight children born to Thomas and Margaret between 1839 and 1853. Thomas’ occupation was recorded as a ‘Fitter Up’ on his marriage certificate and as an ‘Engineer’ and 'Engine Fitter' on subsequent censuses. I can’t be sure of the industry he worked in but there were plenty of tin-plate works close to where he lived.
The family’s addresses in the censuses from 1841 to 1871 are listed as Green Street, Water Street and then Railway Terrace in Aberafan, with the latter forming part of Water Street.
Thomas Hooper died on 26th June 1871 from Tuberculosis. He was 57.
Then that same year, on 1st November, Mary died after contracting Typhoid twenty days earlier. She was only 22 years old.
In the same month as Mary’s death another person’s near-death experience with the disease ended up galvanising the British government into action.
In the late autumn of 1871, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria, contracted Typhoid and spent two months in a feverish and delirious state at Sandringham, looked after by two royal physicians, William Jenner and William Gull. There were daily updates in newspapers about the Prince’s health, his suffering and his recovery. And the narrative about Typhoid, that the disease was the exclusive province of the industrial poor, was changed forever. If a future king could catch it, then anyone could.

“Parliament responded swiftly, passing the first comprehensive sanitary legislation, the Public Health Act of 1872, followed by subsequent improvements in another act of 1875. Together, these acts compelled local authorities to provide municipal sanitation systems and hire permanent Medical Officers of Health, local public health officials to conduct disease surveillance and outbreak investigation.” Jacob Steere-Williams.[ii]

It seems that Mary was tragically unlucky. No other member from her family appears to have contracted the disease which would have been picked up from poor sanitation and/or water contaminated with faeces. At the time of the 1871 census Mary was ‘employed at home’, along with her older sister, as a Laundress, I believe (it is very difficult to interpret the writing on the census return.) If this was the case, could she have contracted it through laundering soiled clothing or bedlinen?
Dear Mary, it might have taken the life of a prince to change the law, but we shine a light on your life. A young woman from our town who left the world far too soon.
[i] J O’Brien, of the Aberavon & Margam District Historical Society, writing in The Guardian 13th July 1934.
[ii] https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/.../typho.../ideas/essay/