Summary of experience on disease, and comparative rates of mortality / by William Lee.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Summary of experience on disease, and comparative rates of mortality / by William Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    23/82 (page 21)
    it through tlieir houses once ai -week or fortniglit. Ann Birtles occupies one of the houses, and said (p. 9),— My husband died of cholera, and I was ill. I cany the tub through the house weekly, and make a hole in the yard and cover it up. John Malkin, another tenant, says (p. 9),— We get water for food 150 yards off. We carry the nightsoil tub through the house, and empty it into the river. We also tako water for washing and cleaning out of the river. There are no pumps in the neighbourhood. Gas-alley is a passage about 4 feet 4 inches wide, witli about half-a-dozen houses on one side and high walls and buildings on the other. I spoke to one of the occupants, Wm. Shan'att, who said (p. 9),— I have lived here seven years, and pay for house and bedroom 1.1. 6^d. per week rent. I have a wife and six children. We all had the fever two years since, and at the next door all in the house had it, and the man and his wife died. My wife has lately had the bowel complaint, but we have escaped the cholera. One died of it next door, and tAvo others in the alley. There were many cases in the five houses. We have no back doors, nor any privies. We get water about 120 yards off. There are no drains but the stag- nant channel close to the doors. Behind the south side of Hospital-street, at Pall-mall, is a very offensive open stagnant ditch containing nightsoil. A person living in a cottage within 9 feet of it had cholera twice. The back premises of the Viae public house come to this ditch, and the wife and daughter of the occupier both died of cholera. In Mill-street many of the inhabitants drink river water after it has received the drainage of a large part of the town, and there were 20 deaths j&'om cholera in tliat street. In one house the father and mother died and left 9 little chil- dren. These facts, selected from a multitude recorded in the same town, are sufficient to prove that death is the natui-al consequence of breathing an atmosphere charged with the gases produced by the decomposition of town refuse, and drinking water tainted by such refuse. Typhus fever ra- vaged the town of Nantwich in 181<7, anil in 1849 there were about 180 deaths and nearly a thousand cases of cho- lera amidst a population of about 6,000. The deaths from this disease alone Avere 30 to 1,000 of the inliabitants in the short space of 14 weeks; or about double the present an- nual mortality of some healtliy districts in the country. Thomas WiUiavison, Esq., the medical officer of the