My great grandfather Christopher Vincent Gibbons died of typhus on 28 April 1868. From notes made by my mother, there was an outbreak brought to the village by a tramp and several people died.Is there any record of this, either there or in Westport please?
An outbreak of typhus fever was reported in Mayo newspapers "Mayo Constitution" (5th May) and "Ballinrobe Chronicle & Mayo Advertiser" (9th May). 9 patients had been admitted to the fever hospital since 1st April according to newspapers. There was a report from the Board of Guardians, the organisation which was in charge of the workhouse and infirmary. Surviving records from Boards of Guardians might be with Mayo Libraries & Archves.
The outbreak may have been reported in other newspapers. The 2 newspapers I mentioned are in the collection on Find My Past. There are other newspaper collections.
Have you seen Christopher's death registration? There's no image of the register on Irish Genealogy ie website. If it had been a year for which the register is visible you could have flipped pages to look for other typhus deaths.
Westport Workhouse records including Minutes of the Board of Guardians are in Dublin in the National Library of Ireland. There are also records in the Local History Department of Castlebar Central Library. (Btw London School of Economics Library has Board of Guardians Minutes Books 1840-46.) Information about Westport Workhouse + links www.workhouses.org.uk/Westport
Mayo County Library https://www.mayo.ie/library/local-history
There is a Westport Historical Society.
Another victim of typhus in Mayo in 1868 was Patrick McBride, who had come to Westport from Antrim in the 1850s and become a merchant. He died aged 35 when his youngest son, John was a baby. John grew up to become Major John McBride, marry the celebrated beauty, Maud Gonne, be executed after the 1916 Easter Rising and be mentioned in a famous poem by Yeats. An elder son of Patrick McBride was elected as the first Sinn Fein deputy for West Mayo in 1918.