The first victim was Janet Lindsay, a drunken old woman who lodged with widow Proudfoot and her daughter in Todd’s Close, Goosedubs; she was asthmatic, and had not been beyond the Goosedubs for weeks. Her seizure, with vomiting and purging, was on the afternoon of Thursday, 9th February, and her death on Saturday morning. Also on the 9th February, in the suburb of Woodside, remote from Goosedubs, the infant of one McGie was attacked with cholera, suffered much from cramps on the 10th and died on the 11th, the father, mother and others of the family afterwards suffering from cholera. The third case, fatal in a few hours, appeared early in the morning of Friday the 10th in a boy living in Millroad Street, a mile east of the Goosedubs, who had been subject to diarrhoea for some weeks. The fourth victim was a gardener in Macalpine Street, a locality also remote from the Goosedubs and in the opposite direction from Millroad Street, who had walked three miles to Pollokshaws on the 9th, and had partaken of tea with friends at Crossmyloof on his way back, in excellent health: he was seized at midnight with purging, and died on the afternoon of the second day. The fifth case was in Partick on the 11th, the sixth in Bridgegate on the 12th, not far from the close in the Goosedubs where the first case had occurred. On the 17th the first of many cases occurred in Paisley, and on the same day there was a case at Maryhill (population of some 500), followed by six more before the next afternoon. Thus there were, besides the case of cholera in the very heart of old Glasgow, half-a-dozen other cases the same day or in the next day or two, at scattered points all round the city. About fifty of the neighbours had visited Janet Lindsay in Todd’s Close, and some had helped to lay her out. The next case in the close was of a woman who had stopped in the street to talk with the widow Proudfoot shortly after the body had been removed; this woman was seized at seven next morning (Sunday, the 12th Feb.), and died in the hospital after twenty-four hours. Three days passed, and then there occurred two other cases, both fatal, in Todd’s Close, one of them being the widow Proudfoot herself, who refused to be taken to the hospital, and would receive no other medicine or cordial but whisky. No other cases occurred in the close for several weeks; but within a range of two hundred yards of it there were 46 cases from the 13th to the 29th of February. It was, indeed to this region of Glasgow, the Goosedubs and the Wynds, that the infection was chiefly confined for the first few weeks; it was especially severe in Francis’s Close, Broomielaw, a collection of small wretched hovels, in which some twenty died of cholera[1496]. The state of the three old Wynds of Glasgow and of other the like localities has been already referred to under a date a year or two before the outbreak of cholera (supra p. 598).
No better instance could be given of the inscrutable ways in which the infection of cholera found out the weak places and the likely subjects than the explosion in the Glasgow Town’s Hospital or pauper infirmary on the 22nd of February, some twelve days after the first cases in various parts of the city and suburbs.
The infirmary, built in two blocks on the north bank of the Clyde, contained 395 inmates occupying 296 beds, some 60 or 70 of whom were insane or fatuous. The fatuous lived in ground-floor cells of the north block, from seven to eleven feet square, with a stone vaulted roof, a stone floor, no fireplace, damp from situation and want of sun, but all the more damp from being often washed owing to the uncleanly habits of the inmates. At eight on the morning of the 22nd February two fatuous paupers in adjoining cells were found cold and pulseless; they had vomited and purged during the night, although they had been well the evening before; each of the two cells had three beds with five occupants. One of the two seized died next day, the other recovered in a week, having had severe spasms and a degree of collapse. Cases appeared almost at the same time in various parts of the building, most of them in scattered individuals, but in one instance in as many as five together in a garret holding twenty-two. From the 22nd February to the 9th of March there were 64 attacks of cholera in this pauper institution[1497]. Besides the five deaths in the Sunderland Workhouse, this was the first of many instances of the remarkable invasion of such institutions.
Until July the infection had been limited in Glasgow to certain of the lowest localities, and even in these it had declined almost to extinction in the last week of May. As the summer advanced it increased somewhat again, and in the first days of August it took a sudden start, reaching a maximum of 181 attacks in one day, and 817 in a week. It was no longer confined to the poorest districts, but became diffused all over Glasgow, so that “there was scarcely a street where one or more cases did not occur.” From this enormous prevalence in August, it declined again in September, but once more took a start in the last few days of that month and in the first week or two of October. The last outburst was ascribed to the effects of the Glasgow public holiday on 28 September, to celebrate the passing of the Reform Bill for Scotland, but the course of the epidemic clearly followed the season, being precisely parallel in Edinburgh, in Dumfries and in the coast towns of Fife. From the middle of October, the disease declined rapidly and was extinct before the middle of November. The following table shows week by week the number of new cases reported daily to the Board of Health, and the deaths in each week[1498].
Cholera in Glasgow, 1832 (population 202,426).
| Week ending | New cases | Deaths | |||
| Feb. | 19 | 62 | 21 | ||
| 26 | 113 | 46 | |||
| Mar. | 4 | 68 | 39 | ||
| 11 | 85 | 60 | |||
| 18 | 94 | 50 | |||
| 25 | 150 | 61 | |||
| April | 1 | 138 | 74 | ||
| 8 | 112 | 57 | |||
| 15 | 99 | 50 | |||
| 22 | 120 | 60 | |||
| 29 | 71 | 40 | |||
| May | 6 | 71 | 39 | ||
| 13 | 73 | 39 | |||
| 20 | 41 | 31 | |||
| 27 | 21 | 11 | |||
| June | 3 | 6 | 7 | ||
| 10 | 45 | 17 | |||
| 17 | 72 | 39 | |||
| 24 | 168 | 70 | |||
| July | 1 | 127 | 72 | ||
| 8 | 131 | 62 | |||
| 15 | 143 | 68 | |||
| 22 | 229 | 101 | |||
| 29 | 218 | 113 | |||
| Aug. | 5 | 817 | 356 | ||
| 12 | 699 | 339 | |||
| 19 | 483 | 228 | |||
| 26 | 419 | 178 | |||
| Sept. | 2 | 231 | 122 | ||
| 9 | 117 | 50 | |||
| 16 | 60 | 31 | |||
| 23 | 84 | 33 | |||
| 30 | 165 | 90 | |||
| Oct. | 7 | 310 | 140 | ||
| 14 | 173 | 95 | |||
| 21 | 95 | 58 | |||
| 28 | 47 | 29 | |||
| Nov. | 4 | 41 | 18 | ||
| 11 | 10 | 11 | |||
| Total | 6208 | 3005 | |||
The effect of the epidemic upon the general mortality of Glasgow is shown in the table of deaths from all causes and from cholera month by month, compiled from the burial registers, which make the cholera deaths 161 more than the returns to the Board of Health.
Glasgow Mortality in 1832.
| All deaths | Cholera deaths | |||
| Jan. | 824 | — | ||
| Feb. | 874 | 87 | ||
| March | 955 | 264 | ||
| April | 816 | 229 | ||
| May | 677 | 125 | ||
| June | 783 | 196 | ||
| July | 990 | 441 | ||
| Aug. | 1755 | 1222 | ||
| Sept. | 749 | 243 | ||
| Oct. | 755 | 334 | ||
| Nov. | 529 | 25 | ||
| Dec. | 571 | — | ||
| 10,278 | 3166 | |||
While the cholera lasted (12 Feb.-11 Nov.) the burials from all other or ordinary causes were 4958; in the corresponding nine months of 1831 they were 4862, having been excessive in that year owing to fever. The baptisms from 15 December, 1831, to 14 December, 1832, were 3388; so that the cholera alone destroyed nearly as many lives, chiefly adult, as there were children born in the year.