Interesting Stories and Notes

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The Cholera pandemic of 1832

Cholera was a world-wide problem in the early 19th Century, usually starting in India or China and sweeping through the world. The 1832 epidemic in Nottingham started in India in 1826 and died out in the USA in 1838. It was such epidemics, hitting the well off as well as the poor,  that resulted in improved water and sewerage systems in the UK during the next decades.

The following is an account of a death by cholera in 1832:

Mr John Kale, basket maker, of South Street, aged 23 years, and his wife, aged 21 years, died on 12th October. They were both in perfect health when they arose in the morning, but soon after the wife complained of being unwell. Not suspecting anything amiss, he went on his business to Hucknall, and on returning through Bulwell in the afternoon, was taken ill and was so bad that he died on the road. So rapid was the decomposition of the body that it was obliged to be buried the same evening at Basford.  In the meantime, the wife sickened, and died the same night, of cholera, at South Street, in Nottingham.  

In addition to cholera, there was Typhoid which was a water borne disease and  typhus which is caused by the bite of the body louse.  The latter is found in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions such as found in poor housing, jails (jail fever) etc.

(These facts are a summary of data that appears in a Teaching document issued by the University of Nottingham).¹⁶¹

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