ABSTRACT
Accidents caused the deaths of nine people at Marshall’s Pen and Martins Hill between 1818 and 1832. Two people died in wagon accidents, another two
drowned, one man died of a broken neck, and another of a fractured skull. One person died from the effects of being kicked by a cow and another from ‘the effects of intoxication’. Finally, one woman died when she ‘fell into the fire in a fit’. Parasitic
infections, ‘worms’, were responsible for the deaths of eight people; however, at least one physician who had practiced in Jamaica, James Thompson, reported that he had conducted autopsies on several children whose cause of death had been listed as worms, and discovered post-mortem symptoms of hydrocephaly, ‘water on the
brain’, suggesting that this condition may have occasionally been misdiagnosed as worms.24
