Sanitary measures and their results ; being a sequel to "The history of cholera in Exeter in 1832." / by Thomas Shapter.

  • Thomas Shapter
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary measures and their results ; being a sequel to "The history of cholera in Exeter in 1832." / by Thomas Shapter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    poultry kept in confined cellars and outhouses ; of dung-heaps everywhere;—one cottage was visited in which the accumulated filth and soil of thirteen years was deposited, and esteemed so valuable a property that its removal was strenuously resisted. To add to this picture of filth and dirt, in many parts, ihe visits of the scavengers took place but once a week. Mortality Though tbe positiou and general characteristics of Exeter were from Cholera o i o in 1832. those of health and pleasantness, such was the prevailing con- dition of its lower and neglected portions, when, on the 19th of July, 1832, tlie Cholera burst upon the City. Between this date and tbe 19th of October, in a population of 28,242, 402 deaths ensued from tbis disease, besides 142 attributed to other causes. Tbis, doubtless, was a very large amount of mortality, especially when it is further considered that the fonner deaths were, as regards locality, very unequally distributed, amounting in four of tbe twenty parishes, which comprise the City, to three-aud-a-half per cent, upon their population in tbe short period of three months. Now these four parishes, together with some few other isolated spots, were precisely those characterised by bad drainage and a generally ill-cared for and unwholesome state. fromch^^^^^ ^^^^ ^'^^ turn to tbe second period of our inquiry, and we m IS43. shall find, on tbe recurrence of tbe Cholera in 1849 (when it is to be recollected that London, Bristol, and Plymouth, sufiered as in 1832), that in Exeter, with an increased population of 31,312, the total deaths from the 19th of July to the 29th of October, the period during which this epidemic prevailed, amounted, from Cholera and from diarrhoea, to forty-three only; and even this number should not be stated without some abatement and modifi- cation, for of these, eleven died, not in Cholera, but from the con- secutive fever ; while thirteen, being travellers and strangers to the City, came into it ill and died within a few hours. Assuming, however, that the whole number of forty-three were deaths proper to the population, the very large proportion of twenty-six were amongst those located in the lower parts of the City, and near the streams which there traverse it, or they resided in houses con- spicuously dirty and ill ventilated, and otherwise offering those
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