History of Sanitation

HISTORY OF SANITATION 97 workhouse (almshouse) in Poland Street was three-fourths surrounded by houses in which cholera deaths occurred, out of 525 inmates of the workhouse, only five cholera deaths occurred. The workhouse, however, had a well of its own in addition to the city supply, and never sent for water to the BVoad Street pump. If the cholera mortality in the workhouse had been equal to that in its immediate vicinity, it would have had 50 deaths. A brewery in Broad Street employing seventy work- men was entirely exempt, but having a well of its own, and allowances of malt liquor having been customarily made to the employees, it appears likely that the proprietor was right in his belief that resort was never had to the Broad Street well. It was quite otherwise in a cartridge factory at No. 38 Broad Street, where about two hundred work people were employed, two tubs of drinking water having been kept on the premises and always filled from the Broad Street pump. Among these employees eighteen died of cholera. Similar facts were elicited for other factories on the same street, all tending to show that in general those who drank the water from the Broad Street pump well suffered either from cholera or diarrhoea, while those who did not drink that water escaped. The whole chain of evidence was made absolutely conclusive by several remarkable and striking cases, like the following: “A gentleman in delicate health was sent for from Brighton to see his brother at No. 6 Poland Street, who was attacked by cholera and died in twelve hours, on the ist of September. The gentleman arrived after his brother’s death, and did not see the body. He only stayed about twenty minutes in the house, where he took a hasty and scanty luncheon of rump steak, taking with it a small tumbler of cold brandy and water, the water being from Broad Street pump. He went to Pentonville, was attacked with cholera on the evening of the following day, Septem- ber 2d, and died the next evening. The death of Mrs. E. and her niece, who drank the