Report on the mortality of cholera in England, 1848-49.

  • William Farr
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the mortality of cholera in England, 1848-49. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Invasion of the Inland from the Coast Districts. with water bj' pumps and wells ; the supply is scanty, and as most of the wells are fed by surface waters, ii. may be doubted if they can be free from a mixture with impurities derived from the house refuse soaking into the ground in all directions. The most wretched part of Dowlais is the cellars, a collection of small houses in a depression between a line of road, a cinder heap, and the river Taf. An open, stinking, and nearly stagnant gutter, into which the house refuse is as usual flung, moves slowly before the doors. While there were no deaths from cholera in the small towns of Christchurch and Ringwood on the lower part of the Avon in Hampshire, the epidemic was excessively fatal iiigher up the river, in Salisbury, which is connected with Southampton and Ports- mouth by a line of railway. Salisbury is always an unhealthy place ; it is on a low damp valley, in the midst of water meadows ; the courts and alleys where the lower classes reside, are in a filthy state, and derive no benefit from the general system of cleansing carried on in the main streets. There is a mill-dam; and any attempt, says Captain Denison, to improve the general drainage would be imprac'icable; it would interfere with too many interests.* The population of the town has slightly decreased in the lo years 1841-51. Newcastle-under-Lyme is another instance of mortality from cholera on high land. This district suffered severely. Out of a po])ulation of about 20000, there were 241 deaths from cholera. The town, on some of the highest ground in the interior of England, is about 400 feet above the level of the sea, and not far from the sources of the Trent; it is in a basin, and the Lyme, dammed by a mill, is an open sewer running through the town and sending up from its polluted, black, muddy bed exhala- tions which poison the inhabitants. The mayor was one of the victinis. Bilston, in the Wolverhampton District, also in the interior of the country, suffered severely from the epidemic. Tlie place and the people have often been described: nothing can l)e worse than the circumstances in which they live or die. Epidemic cliolera was raging in Hamburgh when the first cases were noticed in the ports of London, Hull, Sunderland, on the east coast of England, opposite, and in con- stant commercial relation with tliat continental port. The epidemic appeared in an unequivocal form at the commencement of October, 1848 ; yet it made little progress until the spring of 1849, when it gradually spread from the coast anil river mouths to the interior ol the country. Noticing only tiie great eruption, it appeared at Liver- pool, on the Mersey, March loth; Manchester, in the interior, June 25th; and Wigan, July glh. As it went from Cardifl' to Mertiiyr Tydfil, so ascending ihe Usk, it broke out at Newport, on May 29ih; Abergavenny, on June 3rd; CricKhowell, on July 2ist. On the Lower Avon it was at Clifton on May 24th; Bristol, June ist; Bedminster, July 8tli. Gloucester, on the Severn, was attacked on May 4th ; Shrews- bury, higher up the river, on July 25th. The great Wolverhampton cholera field, in the interior of the coiuUry, was attacked late; Wolverhampton, on July 17th; Stourbridge, August loth; Walsall, August 25th; West Bromwich, August 31st. On the south coast the chief epidemic broke out at Plymouth, on June 5th; Stoke Damerel, July 41I1; Tavistock, higher up the country, July 24th. Southampton was attacked on June 30th ; the low Portsea Island, July 2nd; Alverstoke, July 6th; Salisbury, July lOth. The epidemic in the London field began to be fatal in London itself about May 25th; in Brighton, June 13th; Gravesend, June 29th; Brent- ford, June 29th; Rochtbrd, July 5th; Thanet, including Ramsgate and Margate, July 14th. Up the river Le;i, Hertford was attacked August 21st; Hitchin, further north, August 27th. The first cases on the Humber, and its tributaries, occurred at Hull in 1848 ; but the outbreak of the great epidemic occurred first at Leeds, on .Fune 14th; Hull, JulyTth; Sculcoates, July 23rd; Gainsborough, August 4th; Howden, August 2nd ; Seiby, August 13th; Goole, August 6th ; Thorne, August 19th. On the river Tees the epidemic began at Stockton, July 7th; at Teesdale, higher up the country, on August i7lh. ♦ Reg. Gen. Quarterly Report, No. 3, 1849, '^^ Appendix, p. 241, lo 2nd Report of Healtli of Towns Cuinmissiouers.
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