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The Cambridge fever: the closure of Cambridge University during the Easter Term of 1815

Ged Martin, Hughes Hall Honorary Fellow and author of Hughes Hall 1885-2010, has written a fascinating online essay recounting the Cambridge fever of 1815.

Until COVID-19 struck this year, the local epidemic was the last time in history that university activity was effectively shutdown due in such circumstances and Prof Martin’s essay recounts the details of the event and how, why and when the University responded. 

“This year’s Easter Term has been unlike any other in our history.”[209] Hughes Hall’s July 2020 statement was a reasonable reflection from one of the fourteen Cambridge colleges that had not been founded in 1815. Nonetheless, it is worth recalling that there was an earlier occasion upon which students had to be sent away from Cambridge in the face of public concern at an outbreak of disease that forced the suspension of the University’s activities.

Ged Martin, The Cambridge fever: the closure of Cambridge University during the Easter Term of 1815

Read The Cambridge fever: the closure of Cambridge University during the Easter Term of 1815.

Read more about Professor Martin’s published history of Hughes Hall here.