Beyond the Roundels

The William Holland diary excerpts are fascinating. I think collecting whortleberries was quite a big thing in my part of rural Surrey too, right up till the time my father was a boy. The usual Surrey name for them was "hurts", presumably just an abbreviation of whortleberry. There's an area known as Hurtwood not far from where I live.

Scarlet fever was a major problem right up until the 1940s, when there were still separate fever hospitals where the patients I think mostly had either scarlet fever or diptheria. My mother was a fever nurse, which is how I know about it. Thankfully when vaccines were developed both diseases pretty much vanished and separate fever hospitals were no longer necessary.