Successive days of most extensive Cholera in Edinburgh, 1832.
| New cases | |||
| Oct. | 1 | 22 | |
| 2 | 23 | ||
| 3 | 44 | ||
| 4 | 45 | ||
| 5 | 23 | ||
| 6 | 30 | ||
| 7 | 27 | ||
| 8 | 18 | ||
| 9 | 13 | ||
| 10 | 26 | ||
This gives 214 cases in the week ending 7th October, as compared with Glasgow’s 310 in the same week.
At the Castle Hill Cholera Hospital, 318 were admitted and 187 died. The ages, with the rates of fatality at each age-period, agree closely with those already given for the chief hospital in Glasgow. The smaller ratio of hospital fatality in the second half of the epidemic was perhaps more marked in Edinburgh: 119 cases, with 85 deaths, from the opening of the hospital to 5 July; 199 cases, with 97 deaths, from 5 July to the closing of the hospital. That larger proportion of recoveries may have been due in part, Craigie thinks, to better methods of treatment; but, in his opinion, it was mainly owing to the greater number of strong constitutions among those attacked over a wider area of the city.
Beyond the statistics and other particulars for Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the minute accounts of the first outbreaks in the beginning of the year, there is little exactly recorded of the cholera of 1832 in the rest of Scotland; but the following table, compiled according to counties from the alphabetical list of the London Board of Health, will serve to show the epidemic in outline.
Deaths by Asiatic Cholera in Scotland, 1832.
| Counties | Deaths | No. of places attacked | Places with highest mortalities in each county | |||
| Caithness | 96 | iii | Wick 69, Thurso 26, Latheron 1 | |||
| Sutherland | — | — | ||||
| Ross and Cromarty | 102 | vii | Tain 55, Dingwall 17, Avoch 12, Cromarty 11, Several villages no return | |||
| Inverness-shire | 191 | iii | Inverness 177 | |||
| Nairnshire | 5 | i | Nairn 5 | |||
| Moray | — | — | ||||
| Banffshire | 15 | i | Rathven (Buckie) 15 | |||
| Aberdeenshire | 108 | ii | Aberdeen and Footdee 99, Collieston 9 | |||
| Kincardine | — | — | ||||
| Forfarshire | 552 | iv | Dundee 512, Cupar Angus 17, Arbroath 13, Liff and Benvie 10 | |||
| Perthshire | 81 | v | Perth 66, Auchterarder 7, Kenmore 4, Tulliallan 3 | |||
| Fife and Kinross | 301 | xii | Cupar and district 108, Kirkaldy and Dunnikier 104, Dysart 39, Wester Wemyss 17, Kinghorn 15, Burntisland 13, Anstruther 10, Leven 14, St Andrews 5 | |||
| East Lothian | 213 | vii | Tranent 78, Haddington 65, Dunbar etc. 38, Prestonpans 28 | |||
| Berwickshire | 41 | Coldstream 41 | ||||
| Midlothian | 1780 | xiii | Edinburgh 1065, Suburbs of, 146, Leith 267, Musselburgh and Fisherrow 202, Newhaven 52, Portobello 33 | |||
| Linlithgowshire | — | — | ||||
| Clackmannanshire | 75 | i | Clackmannan 75 | |||
| Stirlingshire | 247 | x | Alloa 72, Stirling 35, Falkirk 36, Larbert 31, Balfron 28, St Ninian’s 15, Bothkenner 10, Carriden 13, Grangemouth 8 | |||
| Lanarkshire | 3575 | xii | Glasgow 3005, Pollokshaws 143, Govan 77, Old Monkland 125, Rutherglen 65 | |||
| Renfrewshire | 1001 | xi | Paisley 444, Greenock 436, Port Glasgow 69 | |||
| Dumbartonshire | 86 | iii | Dumbarton 67, Bonhill 13, Helensburgh 6 | |||
| Bute | 14 | i | Rothesay 14 | |||
| Argyle | 35 | ii | Inverary 25, Campbelltown 10 | |||
| Ayrshire | 466 | x | Kilmarnock 205, Ayr 190, Dairy 22, Irvine 19 | |||
| Kirkcudbrightshire | 133 | iv | Troqueer (Maxwelltown) 125, Kirkcudbright 3 | |||
| Dumfriesshire | 441 | v | Dumfries 418, Caerlaverock 15 | |||
| Roxburghshire | 34 | i | Hawick 34 (second outbreak only). |
Near Glasgow numerous centres of cholera were established, among which Paisley, Greenock and Dumbarton suffered heavily during the same space as Glasgow, from February to November. Rothesay, Campbelltown and Inverary had epidemics in spring or early summer. In June and July the infection was carried effectually into Ayrshire (an earlier importation to Doura, near Kilwinning, in March, having proved abortive) and caused great mortalities at Kilmarnock[1500] and Ayr[1501], as well as much alarm and a good many deaths at Dalry, Irvine and Loudoun. In the latter half of September a most disastrous outbreak began in Dumfries and in the neighbouring Maxwelltown[1502].
The epidemic in Leith and Newhaven proceeded at the same time as in Edinburgh. Another important centre was the midland coal-field of Stirlingshire and Lanarkshire, where the mortality was mostly autumnal. Perth had been reached early in March, Dundee at the end of April, the latter having a visitation on the same scale as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paisley and Greenock. From Dundee, Cupar Fife was infected about the middle of August, and had a severe epidemic almost confined to paupers[1503]. In the autumn there was much cholera among the fishing population from Thurso to Dunbar and Berwick. Inverness had been infected early in May, and was probably the centre from which the disease spread in the end of summer, during the herring fishery, to the coast towns and fishing villages, as well as to Tain and Dingwall. Only a few of these places made returns to the Board of Health; but it is probable from what Hugh Miller relates of the villages near Cromarty that the disease had been more widely spread. That author has described the condition of things in his native town. Its landlocked bay had been made a quarantine station, and was full of shipping flying the yellow flag. Cholera had “more than decimated” the villages of Portmahomak and Inver, and was prevalent in the parishes of Nigg and Urquhart, with the towns of Inverness, Nairn, Avoch, Dingwall and Rosemarkie. The numerous dead at Inver were buried in the sand, infected cottages had been burned down, the infected hamlets of Hilton and Balintore had been shut off from the neighbouring country by a cordon[1504]. The citizens of Cromarty, hitherto untouched, followed the advice of Miller at a public meeting and took the law into their own hands, guarding all the approaches to their peninsula and subjecting all arrivals to fumigation with sulphur and to some undescribed application of chloride of lime. The infection, however, got in by an unguarded channel. A Cromarty fisherman had died of cholera at Wick; his clothes had been ordered to be burned, but a brother of the dead man, who was in Wick at the time, secured some of them and brought them home. He kept them in his chest for a month before he ventured to open it. Next day he was seized with cholera and died in two days. Thereafter the disease crept about the streets and lanes for weeks, striking down both the hale and the worn-out. Pitch and tar were kept burning during the night at the openings of the infected lanes; the clothes of the dead were burned; many of the fishers left their cottages and lived in the caves on the hill until the danger was past[1505].
Among the numerous fishing villages of the Moray Firth, Buckie is the only one given as severely touched by the infection (fifteen deaths). Only one small village of the Aberdeenshire coast, Collieston, is known to have had cholera (nine deaths)[1506]. The Aberdeen epidemic was not severe, and appears to have been mostly in the fishers’ quarter. The Montrose district escaped altogether in 1832; but in June, 1833, the true Asiatic cholera broke out in the fishing villages of Ferryden and Boddin, on the opposite shore of the South Esk from Montrose. Arbroath had a few deaths in August, 1832, while several of the small towns on the coast of Fife had from that time to the end of the year visitations which were only less alarming than those on the south side of the Firth of Forth at the beginning of the year. To sum up the epidemic in Scotland, it caused nearly ten thousand deaths, of which Glasgow and its suburbs had about one-third, Edinburgh, Leith, Dundee, Greenock, Paisley and Dumfries, another third, while a large part of the remainder occurred among the mining and fishing populations[1507].