Career
Life was going well for Frederick John Birch he was working as a Wholesale Draper and Warehouseman for S C Larkins & Sons at a time when Birmingham’s fashion industry was promoting mass market fashion. Part of the Birmingham ‘Big Four’. Wilkinson & Riddell, S. C. Larkins & Sons, Bell & Nicolson, and R. Lunt were located close together within the city centre. Frederick’s job was well respected and he was climbing up the social ladder away from his childhood as the working class son of a brush maker.
Early Life
He was born 26th December 1904 in Kings Heath and had married Evelyn Mabel Kirtland on 26th Juky 1929. His friend, Joe Newey, had acted as his best man and he had enjoyed a honeymoon in Borth. His job provided sufficient income for Evelyn to stay at home and undertake domestic duties.
Illness
Despite the outbreak of war, life was continuing much as normal,when in 1941 Frederick started to feel unwell. At first his symptoms could be dismissed as a cold or sore throat, but he rapidly became weaker and his neck started to swell. He was admitted to City Hospital Little Bromwich where he died on 31st August.
City Hospital Little Bromwich
Little Bromwich Hospital opened on 29th June 1895. It was built on a 23 acre site at Yardley, purchased by Birmingham Corporation for a cost of £4,975. The original plans drawn up by W.H.Ward included 10 pavilions of 24 beds each but only 4 pavilions were built when the hospital opened. It was known as City Hospital, Little Bromwich, as all hospitals run by the City Corporation were prefixed City Hospital- followed the location, this was dropped with the inception of the NHS in 1948. The hospital was not intended to be constantly occupied, but to be used at times of any smallpox epidemic outbreak; this was later extended to include cases of measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria and tuberculosis.
Diphtheria
By the time of Frederick’s admission, vaccines, better health care and living conditions meant that admissions were in decline. Unfortunately for Frederick, not all infectious diseases had been eradicated or ceased to be life-threatening. He had contracted Diphtheria. Highly contagious and particularly deadly among children under age 5.
The name of the disease comes from the Greek word for “leather hide,” a reference to the gray, leather-like coating that the toxin generated by the diphtheria bacterium leaves behind in the nose and throat. Due to its symptoms, it was frequently referred to as the strangling angel. Within a few days, the disease can suffocate. The discovery of an antitoxin derived from horse serum at the end of the 19th century, followed by the widespread vaccination against diphtheria in the 20th century, helped to erase it as a common disease in developed countries.
Frederick John Birch is buried in Castle Bromwich Graveyard.
