The Act, by naming various local authorities, had created a divided power, and consequently a divided responsibility, which resulted in inaction, neglect, delay, and loss of life; and though the General Board of Health might require the Boards of Guardians and other local bodies to put the regulations into force, they had no power to compel them to do so, and in default of such power the General Board of Health was almost helpless.
The cessation of the disease proved to be only temporary. Scarcely was 1849 entered on than the epidemic broke out again, steadily gathering momentum as the summer went on.
In Bethnal Green there was an outbreak in the night—sudden and panic-striking—“consternation and alarm were spread abroad—the hurried passing and re-passing of messengers, and the wailing of relatives, filled the streets with confusion and woe, and impressed all with a deep sense of awful calamity.”
And the epidemic spread and spread until in one week in September (1849) the deaths from it amounted to 2,026.[36]
Were the full facts known, the mortality was doubtless far higher.
And then the epidemic began rapidly to abate, and by the end of the year had ceased, having slain some 14,600 victims.[37]
Numerous and important were the lessons inculcated by this disastrous epidemic. It afforded the most definite evidence that had yet been obtained of the influence upon health of local conditions and pre-disposing causes.
It showed that in the most violent and extensive outbreaks of the pestilence its virulence was invariably confined to circumscribed localities. It showed that the habitat of cholera and the habitat of fever were one and the same.
Deaths from cholera took place in the very same streets, and houses, and rooms, which had been again and again visited by fever; and rooms were pointed out where some of the poor people had recovered from fever in the spring to fall victims to cholera in the summer.