Workhouses, Pauper Farms and the Tooting180 Project
In the winter of 1848, in a matter of days, almost 200 children died from disease contracted in a pauper farm in Tooting, London. You don't need to know much about workhouses, pauper farming or cholera to understand how the deaths of so many children in a single institution sent shockwaves through the country, even at a time when the concept of public health was so different from today's.
This happened a few minutes walk from my home. This website is my attempt to remember those children and better understand how the tragedy unfolded.
Outbreak! Cholera arrives in Tooting
The cholera outbreak of 1848 in the UK was one of the most significant public health events of the 19th century to hit the country. It was part of the second cholera pandemic, which affected much of Europe and Asia.
The outbreak was particularly devastating in London, where it was estimated that over 14,000 people died from cholera. But even in London, the Tooting outbreak made headlines and the Government was moved to act.
Learn more about workhouses, pauper farms and Government legislation
The Tooting180 Project
In 1989 a campaign by children from the local Broadwater Primary School (now closed) succeeded in getting a plaque erected at St Nicholas church, Tooting in memory of those who died. You can see an image of the plaque below.
click to enlarge, © Tooting180
The plaque mentions the man who is largely responsible for the deaths, but this website aims to remember the children themselves.
Visit the St Nicholas church website
My name is Graeme Coles-Andrew, a genealogist and resident of Tooting, and I first heard of the "Tragedy in Tooting" in 2024. It struck me that a website might be a good way to both remember the children and gather more information on them from fellow genealogists and the descendants of survivors.
I took inspiration for the project from the work of five people:
- Daniel Loftus: Project Infant
- Lynn Mayhew: Andrew Mercer Reformatory
- Hallie Rubenhold: The Five
- Paul Chiddicks: Old Palace School Bombing
- Peter Higginbotham: Workhouses.org
I would also like to thank the following people for their assistance and patience with my queries:
- Liz Buchanan at St Nicholas Church, Tooting
- Alicia Chilcott and Ruby Kerrison at Islington Local History Centre
Why "Tooting180"?
The memorial at St Nicholas church states that 118 of the children were buried there, but others were transferred out of Tooting and died elsewhere. Sources at the time put the total death toll attributable to the outbreak at 180.
That's where the research gets complicated. Children were discharged from Tooting to any number of establishments, including hospitals, or to their own families. Tracking down what happened to each child is labour-intensive and requires checking admission registers for numerous workhouses and even individual death certificates.
In addition, since London was in the grip of the Second Cholera Epidemic, extra pressure was put on record-keepers, some of whom could be somewhat lax in their duties at the best of times.
Join In - how you can help the Tooting180 Project
Privacy, cookies and further information
My background is as a software engineer, and if you want to know anything technical about the site I'd be delighted to bore you with details. But rather than hand-coding this site I've been trialling AI to write the code to see how well, or poorly, it does.
I've tried to develop this website free of cookies. None of your personal information is stored. I do not use a third-party analytics tool such as Google Analytics or include any files hosted by other websites that might, in turn, set their own cookies.
You may find duplicate records in the database. When details were recorded in the original source documents bear in mind that the children would largely have been illiterate. Variations in spelling of names are very common. Some handwriting is hard to decipher, and the year of birth often seems to be more of an estimate than fact. As more information is gathered about the children I expect it to become clearer which entries are genuine duplicates.