existing burial grounds, lingering fears of body snatchers, and the atrocity of Enon Chapel should have been enough to bring about a change in the burial laws. But it took another, even more terrible event, to effect reform. Two centuries after the Great Plague, London was terrorized by a series of epidemics.
In the days of my youth, the world was shaken with the dread of a new and terrible plague which was desolating all lands as it passed through them, and so regular was its march that men could tell where next it would appear and almost the day when it might be expected. It was the cholera, which for the first time appeared in Western Europe. Its bitter strange kiss, and man’s want of experience or knowledge of its nature, or how best to resist its attacks, added, if anything, to its horrors.
This account by Mrs Stoker, in a letter to her son Bram, also demonstrates where the author of Dracula derived his chilling turn of phrase.
Asiatic cholera spread across Europe from the Far East, first reaching England in 1831. Helpless, the Government did nothing beyond calling a day of national prayer and fasting, while clerics declared that the epidemic was a vengeance from God for London’s wickedness. By autumn, 5,000 people had died from the epidemic, but still no counter measures were taken. A second outbreak in 1848 compounded the already grisly condition of the burial grounds. Over 14,000 people died in London alone.
As with the Great Plague, it was the poor who bore the brunt of this epidemic. Thomas Miller, who lived in ‘the land of Death’–Stoke Newington–referred to cholera as ‘the dreadful disease which caused almost every street in the metropolis to be hung in mourning’. 19 At Fore Street in Lambeth, the residents ‘looked more like ghouls and maniacs than human beings’. At high tide, their doorways had to be blocked with boards to stop the river getting in,and the surgeon would make his way to patients along planks laid over two feet of water. At the Tooting ‘child farm’, 180 out of nearly 1400 pauper children were wiped out within days, undermined by starvation, impetigo and scrofula. 20
Cholera is a silent killer. One of its most terrifying aspects is its stealth. Early symptoms, including mild fever and gastric upset, seem inconsequential, but the disease can prove fatal within hours. Cholera takes its name from the Ancient Greek word for roof gutter. The violent diarrhoea which characterizes the disease was likened to the effects of a powerful rainstorm. People died swiftly and in terrible pain. Regulars shook hands outside the pub, went home, and were never seen again. The aspiring paterfamilias moved into the bigger house he and his wife had dreamed of, only to find that Death moved in with them, and the family was plunged into penury overnight. Small children, scarcely old enough to walk, found themselves dressed in black and trying to understand why their father had been carried away in a box and their mother would never wake up. Orphaned and penniless, they were destined for the workhouse. In some houses, everybody died. After the building had been closed a few days, other tenants moved in, and they perished too, since the mercenary landlords never divulged the fate of their predecessors. The dead were removed at night; sometimes twenty people were buried in one grave.
The medical profession was defenceless against cholera, with doctors clinging to the theory of ‘miasma’, the conviction that disease broke out when the air became polluted with waste. As rubbish rotted in the street during the long hot summers, it gave off a strong smell, which they believed caused the disease. Chadwick himself subscribed to this theory, maintaining that ‘all smell is disease’.
Far from eliminating the outbreak, sanitation only made conditions worse. Water companies such as The Chelsea Waterworks Company, incorporated in 1723, ‘for the better supplying the city and liberties of Westminster
In the days of my youth, the world was shaken with the dread of a new and terrible plague which was desolating all lands as it passed through them, and so regular was its march that men could tell where next it would appear and almost the day when it might be expected. It was the cholera, which for the first time appeared in Western Europe. Its bitter strange kiss, and man’s want of experience or knowledge of its nature, or how best to resist its attacks, added, if anything, to its horrors.
This account by Mrs Stoker, in a letter to her son Bram, also demonstrates where the author of Dracula derived his chilling turn of phrase.
Asiatic cholera spread across Europe from the Far East, first reaching England in 1831. Helpless, the Government did nothing beyond calling a day of national prayer and fasting, while clerics declared that the epidemic was a vengeance from God for London’s wickedness. By autumn, 5,000 people had died from the epidemic, but still no counter measures were taken. A second outbreak in 1848 compounded the already grisly condition of the burial grounds. Over 14,000 people died in London alone.
As with the Great Plague, it was the poor who bore the brunt of this epidemic. Thomas Miller, who lived in ‘the land of Death’–Stoke Newington–referred to cholera as ‘the dreadful disease which caused almost every street in the metropolis to be hung in mourning’. 19 At Fore Street in Lambeth, the residents ‘looked more like ghouls and maniacs than human beings’. At high tide, their doorways had to be blocked with boards to stop the river getting in,and the surgeon would make his way to patients along planks laid over two feet of water. At the Tooting ‘child farm’, 180 out of nearly 1400 pauper children were wiped out within days, undermined by starvation, impetigo and scrofula. 20
Cholera is a silent killer. One of its most terrifying aspects is its stealth. Early symptoms, including mild fever and gastric upset, seem inconsequential, but the disease can prove fatal within hours. Cholera takes its name from the Ancient Greek word for roof gutter. The violent diarrhoea which characterizes the disease was likened to the effects of a powerful rainstorm. People died swiftly and in terrible pain. Regulars shook hands outside the pub, went home, and were never seen again. The aspiring paterfamilias moved into the bigger house he and his wife had dreamed of, only to find that Death moved in with them, and the family was plunged into penury overnight. Small children, scarcely old enough to walk, found themselves dressed in black and trying to understand why their father had been carried away in a box and their mother would never wake up. Orphaned and penniless, they were destined for the workhouse. In some houses, everybody died. After the building had been closed a few days, other tenants moved in, and they perished too, since the mercenary landlords never divulged the fate of their predecessors. The dead were removed at night; sometimes twenty people were buried in one grave.
The medical profession was defenceless against cholera, with doctors clinging to the theory of ‘miasma’, the conviction that disease broke out when the air became polluted with waste. As rubbish rotted in the street during the long hot summers, it gave off a strong smell, which they believed caused the disease. Chadwick himself subscribed to this theory, maintaining that ‘all smell is disease’.
Far from eliminating the outbreak, sanitation only made conditions worse. Water companies such as The Chelsea Waterworks Company, incorporated in 1723, ‘for the better supplying the city and liberties of Westminster
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