Report on the cholera epidemic of 1866 in England : supplement to the twenty-ninth annual report of the Registrar-General of births, deaths, and marriages in England / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command.

  • Great Britain. General Register Office.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the cholera epidemic of 1866 in England : supplement to the twenty-ninth annual report of the Registrar-General of births, deaths, and marriages in England / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command. 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.

    204/436 (page 96)
    In going from the station along Lea Bridge road you cross the Company’s supply i canal and the Lea. The boathouse at Lea Bridge looked deserted, which thp 1 landlord, who had suffered by no fault of his OAvn, ascribed to the evil reports of the Hegistrar General about the innocent river. Here at the turnpike gate is the boundary of London. The police on each side of the gate were apparently i different; and the registrars were not the same. A death had occurred in the night, and after some difficulty I discovered the house in which it happened. It was on the Hackney side, in a small row of white cottages south of the “ dock,” a mere projecting loop of the Lea, where several pleasure boats lay moored. The house was empty. The man was a labourer ; he had been attacked in the night about 2 o’clock, wdien he and his young wife were alone, and he got no assistance, except from her, until the morning, when some of the neighbours were roused, and the doctor was brought from a distance. The man was in collapse, died, and was immediately buried ; the house was disinfected. I walked in the ; direction of the doctor ; but returned as I found that it was at a considerable distance ; and learnt all the particulars from the wife yesterday, widow to-day, who ’ was kindly taken in by the husband’s sister. She had on the table a bottle of wine i which the clergyman had just left, but neither she nor her sister-in-law had any medicine for premonitory diarrhoea. No disinfectants were in the house. Her ] husband when she took his dinner yesterday said it was nice, but he did not care j for it; she did not know whether he had diarrhoea. By the want of such simple *; precautions lives are lost. The Lea Bridge filter beds were all full except one or two ; gnats were playing ^ over the waters ; and the swallows in active pursuit clustered over a particular J reservoir that appeared to afford them especially good sport. The workmen were i wheeling away barrows full of gravel or sand. The great engine was at work. |, The waters lie in the midst of rich meadows, on which many cows were feeding, i and are surrounded by an amphitheatre of houses and churches, crowned to the ^ north with the Alexandra palace. ^ The Lea was full to the brim of fresh running water, which looked well to the I eye, although it was not perfectly clear. I was walking by its side with a young | visiting clergyman, where we observed marks on the ground of pipes, and on i inquiries found that the Company, at the instance of the Hackney Board, had laid j their water on the cottages. A hale man of fifty was indignant at the evil spoken of ;; the river itself, which had supplied him with water for some thirty or forty years, 'i and insisted on fetching a glass to show us its excellent quality. He told some a stories he had heard to the disparagement of the Thames, which he could easily | |r believe, but insisted strongly on the spotless purity of the Lea. The cottage at j ^ which the labourer had died of cholera had also had the water laid on a fortnight j ago ; but the wife admitted that she did not always draw her water from the tap, t ^ but took it from the dock of the Lea, in front of the cottage, where a woman was i washing her dirty linen on my return. I then walked over the low spongy fields, and finding the way long took a carriage to Walthamstow on rising ground, and saw the registrar, Mr. Browne, ' surgeon, in his comfortable house. There had been no deaths from cholera Mr. Browne said in any previous epidemic, and none in this. The East London Company supplies many of the new and best houses. The people are also supplied • by a deep artesian well in the street, as the wells about are shallow, and the water brackish. This further inspection confirmed the conviction that the cholera stuff was not : distributed in the waters supplied from Lea Bridge, and that on the whole the ‘ waters of the Lea at that point are not impurer to any appreciable extent than those of the Thames. The account of the West Ham district, including West Ham, Stratford, Leyton, and Walthamstow, is in the Weekly Return, No. 36 (September 8th).* The registrar of West Ham was overpowered wuth work and sickness in his family; the dead were buried hurriedly ; many of the people fied ; and he had difficulties *. in getting information. See p. 132.