72 The Public Health. [Jan., 



cated with a cesspool or drain into which Cholera evacuations have 

 passed, or the well has been placed in a situation in which such an 

 occurrence might have taken place. The great case of the Broad 

 Street Pump, in the parish of St. James's, "Westminster, to the 

 drinking of the water of which the outbreak of Cholera in that 

 parish in 1854 was traced, is a capital instance in point. In that 

 case the water was discovered to have been contaminated by the 

 leikings of a cesspool connected with a house in which a fatal case 

 of Cholera had occurred a few days before. The case also of the 

 farmer and his family at Theidon-Bois, in Essex, is another, in 

 which it was clearly demonstrated that the well which supplied the 

 family with water was connected with a cesspool, the overflowings 

 of which passed directly into the well, and eight persons out of a 

 family of eleven thus met their death. The poison was conveyed 

 to this house by the farmer himself, who had been in the South of 

 England, where Cholera prevailed, and had returned home with the 

 disease of which he eventually died. It is curious that this case 

 should have in any way been connected with the outbreak in the 

 East of London, but it was observed by Mr. Radcliffe, and after- 

 wards referred to by the Registrar-General, that the Cobbin — a 

 small stream which drains Epping in the neighbourhood of Theidon- 

 Bois — actually flows into the Lea through Walthain Abbey. Whe- 

 ther the poison of the Epping cases could have got into the Lea 

 and produced the poisoning of its waters or not, we are driven to 

 the conclusion that the water supplied to the East End of London 

 was one of the causes, if not the entire cause, of the great preva- 

 lence of Cholera in that district. 



Another interesting point connected with the appearance of 

 Cholera at the East End of London is the fact, that the attacks of 

 the disease were actually limited to the districts supplied by the 

 East London Water Company. Thus taking the district of Snore- 

 ditch, which lies to the north of the Great Eastern Railway, we 

 iind that the mortality from Cholera, although it is one of the 

 poorest of the East End parishes, was only at the rate of 4 in the 

 1,000. Now, it is in this district that the East London Company's 

 Works come in contact with those of the Xew Paver ; and in rive 

 sub-districts out of seven, into whi.-h Shoreditch is divided, for 

 water-supply, the houses are supplied with water from the Xew 

 Biver. All London is divided into thirty-seven water-supply dis- 

 tricts. Six of these districts are supplied with water from the Old 

 Ford Reservoirs of the East London Water Company, and in every 

 one of these districts Cholera raged. The communities supplied by 

 the other thirty-one districts have only suffered slightly from the 

 disease, and in no one instance has the mortality been perceptibly 

 increased,or of a character to lead to the supposition that it had been 

 otherwise than imported from the Eastern districts ; and it is quite 



