The Express.
London, England, 1853-11-08 00:00:00

THE CHOLERA.

Mos the Gement Bowled Hest, Nov. 7.)
METROPOLIS.
From the metropolis, returns have been this day
received of nine deaths, which occurred in the C, D,
R, L, M, and P, police districts.
Cholera, in its worst form, broke out at the begin-
ning of the last week at 13, Upper Grove-street, St.
George's-in-the-East—a most filthy and abominable
place. The first persons attacked were a dog, rat,
and pigeon fancier, and his wife. The filth of the
animals and a putrid rat were lying about the room.
The patients were both removed to the cholera hos-
pital, where the man died, and the wife is not ex-
pected to recover. Two children were at 02CC taken
to the workhouse, apparently in gJod health : one of
them, however, was attacked at midnight, and the .
seizure eventually proved fatal. A youth was also
attacked in the same house, and died in a few
hours. Dr. Tripe, the medical officer If the district,
immediately made a house-to-house visitation, and
directed the instant dispersion of the inmates of the
house, which be found to be in so filthy a condition,
that he felt it hopeless to attempt to treat any ease
there. The house has been subsequently limewashed
and purified. Grove-street, in which these cases
occurred, is one of the private streets which the Com-
misioners of Paving of the parish have been most
desirous to pave, and have endeavoured to get una r
their jurisdiction ; but the freeholders refuse to give
it up to the public, or allow the Commissioners to
interfere with it. Great complaints are also made of
the terrible e tt uvia from the uatrapped drain in the

neighbourhood.
A statement having been made in the public prints
by the Rev. Mr. Legge, the vicar of Lewisham,
" that any case of cholera has now oreurred at Black-
heath is perfectly false." the following particulars
have been ascertained :—October 28th died Rosina
Asker, at 2 years 7 months, in Pheenix-square, Dart-
mouth-passage; sickness at 9 a.m., died at 3; p.m.;
sudden collapse after an hour, vomiting, but without
diarrheea. The mere absence of purging, or even rat
vomiting at the same time, is no evidence that this
case was not ono of malignant cholera. In-
deed,_ the very worst cases of this formidable
disease are those in which these symptoms are
wholly or partially absent ; the powers of life
being struck dowa at once by the poison. The
opinion of Mr. Carr, of Lee, who attended the pa-
tient, and of Mr. South, the eminent surgeon of St.
Thomas's Hospital, after a careful consideration of
the case, is, that it was one of the existing epidemic.
It is a very instructive fact, that in the house imme-
diately opposite that in which this patient died, a
rapidly fatal came of cholera, registered as such, oc-
curred in 1849, and that Mr. Carr %Jan that occasion
certified " there is a cesspool under the house, giving
out a most offensive smell. In my opinion, the
house is unfit for human habitation.' This is the
case which Mr. Legge alludes to as being that of a
gown who died "perhaps of cholera, but iu
a great measure through his own imprudence."
But this was not the only fatal instance
of the epidemic of 1849 in the naturally healthy and
favoured village of Blackheath, for the existence of
local nuisances will neutralise every advantage of
situation. Between the 30th July and the 6th Sep-
tember in that year four other deaths occurred from
the epidemic. Of these two occurred in a filthy spot
called Bath-place, which has recently been described
lby the local sanitary committee, of which Mr. South
is one of the most active members, in these words :
"The whole of this district, excepting Twentyman'e
and Smith's-cottages, ought to be shut up as quite
unfit for human habitation." Another case, fatal in
11 hours, occurred in another most unwhclesanse
locality, Blackheath-vale or gravel-pits, where the
waterstagnates in a filthy pool, and the basement floors
of the houses are often overflowed with its coa-
-1 tents. On the recent inspection of the district by
I Dr. Milroy, he found that no efficient steps had
been taken since 1849 to correct the notorious sa-
nitary evils which then existed. He found the
condition of the houses in Phoenix-square, Dart-
mouth-passage, where the recent case of cholera
has occurred, to be disgracefully bad, and inevi-
tably endangering the lives of the tenants. The
landlord, who has only recently purchased the
houses, which are held under Lord Dartmouth, the
chief proprietor in the district, has expressed his
intention to remove the privies, whose horrible
effluvia are poisoning the inhabitants, and to re-
place them by suitable closets with sewer laid on.
As the Lewisham board of guardians have appointed
the medical officer of the district as the sanitary
inspector of all such dwellings, it is to be hoped
that the board will henceforth act promptly and
energetically upon his certificate.
SOHAM.
The condition of this town is an example of that
of many others, and of the difficulty when an extra-
ordinary epidemic occurs of carrying into effect any
effectual preventive measures. It also illustrates
the destruction of life, and the loss in money occa-
sioned by the almost constant presence of typhus
and other forms of zymotic disease. Up to the Bth
inst., 29 fatal cases of cholera had occurred. A par-
tial and deceptive lull in the progress of the epidemic
appears to have taken place in the middle of last
week, but the disease began again to re-assume its
virulent form during the night of the 4th. An old
man who at 4 o'clock, p.m. held the horse of
one of the medical officers while he entered
the house to visit a patient, and who then
said he was perfectly well, although it after-
wards appeared that at that very tin.e he
was labouring under premonitory symptoms, was
taken ill in the night, and notwithstanding all medi-
cal aid died in the morning. " When shortly after-
wards I inspected the house," says Dr. Waller Lewis,
" I found his three grandchildren all dangerously ill,
two of them with only slight chances of recovery.
The house was one of those which I had p:eviously
described as wretched and dirty in the extreme, with
large ditches of filthy water, strongly impregnated
with night soil in front and behind it, and n privy in
an indescribable condition in the back-yard.
" This is in Bull-lane, where, and in the immediate
neighbourhood, are numerous other houses in a
similar condition. Many of these houses have lost
one or more of their late inhabitants, and still con-
tain from one to three, or four, cases of the disease,
in one or other of its stages. lam quite at a loss to
know what can be done for these unfortunates.
From the reports of the medical attendants medicine
seems to exert little controlling influence over the
disease. Nothing short of a wholesale removal of
the people from their present infected abodes can
prevent many more falling victims to the pestilence.
" Unluckily, from the nature of this place, this step
is impracticable to any extent. Soham is a town, or
rather a long straggling village, with but few houses
untenanted. The few that are to be had are mostly
situated on the commons, which are intersected
everywhere with full ditches and dotted frequently
with pools of stagnant water. In the winter and
wet weather these commons are for weeks and
months ankle deep in water, and in mug places
quite impassable. In fact they labeur under the
same disadvantages and defects of non-drainage and
saturated soils as_ the most infected localities them-
selves.
"Some conception may be formed of the unhealthy
condition and consequent cost to the Union of some
of these commons, from the fact that I visited a row
of four or five cottages on Jim Fen Common, where
there were some cases of diarrhoea. I was informed
by one of the magistrates, and the statement was con-
firmed by one of the inhabitants, that in the autumn
there had been 18 or 19 eases of fever in those few
houses. 'the Soham guardians assured ate that they
had cost between 50s. and 60s. a week for many
weeks together in wine alone. Can the do-nothing
system he allowed to continue much longer? In one
house in Buil-lane the mother lay dying with cho-
lera in one room, and five children vomiting and
purged in one bed in an adjoining room, wi is so
constructed that it is only by bendicg the
body to nearly a right argle that 1 could
approach the bed to examine the sufferers.
The mother, I regret to say, has died this morning.
A local sanitary committee, established tare at my
suggestion, and with plenary powers nud authority
from the Newmarket Board of Guardians, are now
most energetically and praiseworthily exerting.
themselves to remove the dis:ased to another set of
cottages. But it is doubtful whether much benefit
will be derived from this, from the circumstances
previously stated. Moro good will certainly accrue
from another step also in process of execution,
namely, removing those that are still unafiecad to
a house in a dry and healthy locality. Un-
luckily this will accommodate but three families;
a mere fraction of those that ought to be removed,