cholera

• Responses to cholera epidemics in 1831-1832

  • Boards of health burnt barrels of tar in the streets, cleaned up rubbish, added chloride of lime into sewers
  • Government sought God's help with a national day of fasting, humiliation and prayer
  • Local authorities imposed quarantine, turned poor people away, set up cholera hospitals
• Responses in 1831-1832 were INEFFECTIVE as they were based on incorrect beliefs about how cholera spread (miasma theory)
• Public Health Act 1848 set up by the General Board of Health


  1848
• Public Health Act 1848

  • Forced towns to set up boards of health where death rate was higher than 23 per 1,000
  • Allowed a board of health to be set up if 10% of ratepayers wanted one
  • Allowed boards of health to connect houses to sewers to make sure houses had a clean water supply and set rates to pay for improvements
• The Public Health Act 1848 helped improve public health as places where people were dying from cholera were now getting new sewage systems which helped prevent the spread
• The Public Health Act 1848 had limited impact as it was permissive rather than compulsory (by 1853 only 163 places had set up a local board of health)
• Local ratepayers resented an increase in taxation to pay for the Public Health Act 1848
• Dr John Snow linked cholera to infected water


  1854
• Dr John Snow's theory that cholera was a waterborne disease only had a limited impact as it was not widely accepted at this point, with many continuing to support the miasma theory
• Sanitary Act passed


  1866
• Sanitary Act 1866


  • Local authorities forced to take action to provide fresh water, and sewage and waste disposal
  • All houses had to be connected to a main sewer
  • If authorities did not carry out this work they would be billed by the central government
• The Sanitary Act 1866 was good as it would have limited the spread of cholera by ensuring proper disposal of sewage and reducing contamination of clean water, but it was slow to be put into operation and was clumsily worded
• Edwin Chadwick produced report on Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population in Britain


  1842
• Chadwick's report


  • Suggested local boards of health should provide clean water and new sewage systems
  • Proposed all cesspools should be replaced with water closets connected to sewers
  • Suggested all these changes should be paid for by increase in rates collected from middle class property owners
• Chadwick's proposals faced a lot of opposition from believers in laissez-faire government, water companies and property owners
• Many of Chadwick's suggestions were ignored but he was responsible for passing the first Public Health Act in 1848
• Louis Pasteur published the germ theory


  1861
• The germ theory of disease was not widely accepted until the 1880s, with many still believing in the miasma theory
• Joseph Bazalgette's new London sewerage system opened


  1865
• Bazalgette's new sewerage system revolutionised public health and prevented the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera
• There were no further cholera epidemics in Britain after 1866
• Cholera


  • Caused by dirty water contaminated with bacteria (the excrement of people who carried the disease)
  • Caused severe vomiting and diarrhoea, infectious and often fatal, victims would die within 1-2 days
• Cholera epidemics began in India and entered Britain through the port of Sunderland in 1831
• Cholera epidemics in Britain

  • 1831-32
  • 1848
  • 1854
  • 1865-66
• Cholera epidemics in Britain killed over 100,000 people overall