Cholera in Victorian England
Throughout Queen Victoria's reign, the country suffered from several epidemics of cholera, the first occurring in Sunderland in 1831. It attacked because a ship had recently docked which carried sailors who were carrying the contagious disease from Hamburg. London experienced their first case in 1832 but it only claimed 800 East end lives and in that year, a child born at Bethnal Green was expected to live up to sixteen years at the most! Also in this year, tuberculosis was a bigger killer than cholera. Cholera is a horrible virus which is passed through water and food contaminated with the disease. It causes dehydration, vomiting and severe diarrhoea. The faeces come out ridiculously quick and cause extreme loss of bodily fluids. Because of the lack of medicine and no NHS (For those who dwell in England), there was a near 100% chance of death for one of it's victims! In Lewis Square, Nottingham in 1856, a census recorded that 616 people were killed by cholera. To ad...