Glasgow has been supplied, since the early part of the present century, with the water of the Clyde, obtained a little way above the town, but within the influence of the tide, and consequently mixed with the contents of the sewers. It is imperfectly filtered through sand. In 1847, however, the parish of Gorbals, which forms the south part of Glasgow, was furnished with a supply of water collected on the neighbouring hills; and Dr. Leech, of Glasgow, speaks as follows respecting the influence of this water on the prevalence of cholera: “During the late cholera there was a remarkable circumstance, which deserves notice as compared with the epidemic of 1832. Since the former period, the population of Glasgow, south of the Clyde, has nearly doubled; and with this exception, and the introduction of the soft-water supply, the circumstances might be considered as the same at both periods. In one district, the parish of Gorbals, the attack in 1832 was fearful; while Glasgow, north of the Clyde, also suffered severely. During the late epidemic [that of 1848–49], Gorbals parish furnished comparatively a small number of cases; while the epidemic in other parts of Glasgow was very severe. The unanimous opinion of the Medical Society was, that this comparative immunity was to be attributed to the soft-water supply.”[[22]]
CHOLERA IN NEWCASTLE.
I was informed that when the cholera was prevalent in Glasgow last winter, the parish of Gorbals again enjoyed a similar immunity from the disease.
The following passage respecting the water supply of Paris is from Dr. Farr’s “Report to the Registrar-General on the Cholera of 1848–49”:—“The supply of Paris is from various sources, but four-fifths of the water is from the Canal de l’Ourque, which, by the decision of Napoleon, was also appropriated to navigation. The water for some years, and in 1832, when the epidemic was so fatal, was drawn from the dirty basin in which the boats and barges of the canals rested; but is now drawn from the canal before it enters the basin.... The mortality of cholera in Paris was excessive, and in 1832 varied from 80, of 10,000 inhabitants, in the elegant Chaussée d’Antin and in Montmartre on the heights, to 530 and 520 in the low quartiers of the Hôtel de Ville and the Cité.” (p. lxxviii.)
The town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne affords a remarkable instance of the influence of the water supply on the prevalence of cholera. In 1831–32 there were no waterworks at Newcastle; it was supplied, in an insufficient manner, with spring water, which generally had to be carried some distance to the houses from “pants” in the streets. The epidemic was pretty severe at this time. From November 1831 to November 1832 there were 801 deaths from cholera out of a population of 42,760. The disease prevailed chiefly amongst the poor, and was worst in the least elevated parts of the town, near the river. Subsequently to 1832, waterworks were established on the river Tyne, a little above the town; but these were abandoned, in 1848, in favour of a supply from a rivulet and springs at Whittle Dean, about ten miles distant. In 1849, there were but 295 deaths from cholera in a population then increased to 71,847. In the beginning of July 1853, two months before the reappearance of cholera in England, the Whittle Dean Water Company found their proper sources insufficient for the demands of the population and the various factories, and they made use of the former waterworks, mentioned above, to obtain water from the Tyne. The point at which they obtained water from the river, is scarcely a mile above Newcastle, and the tide flows for six miles above the town, carrying the contents of the sewers with it. There are also villages, containing several thousands of colliers and ironfounders, on the banks of the Tyne, above the waterworks. The water from the Tyne was mixed, without filtration, with that from Whittle Dean, to the extent of one-third; and the mixed water, so supplied, was discoloured, and contained the large quantity of 7·1 grains of organic matter per gallon.
In the autumn of 1853, the cholera was prevailing extensively at Hamburgh, and in nearly all the ports of the Baltic, whence a number of ships were arriving every day in the Tyne. The first cases of cholera commenced, with diarrhœa, on the 27th and 28th August, at Bell Quay, on the banks of the Tyne, three miles below Newcastle. One of the patients from Bell Quay was taken worse whilst on a visit to her mother at Newcastle: she died on 2nd September. Her mother was taken ill the same evening, and died on the following day. Other cases occurred in Newcastle on the 1st and 2nd of September, having no connexion with these. A ship from Bremen was lying at Bell Quay, opposite the house where the first cases occurred; but there had been no illness on board this ship, and the precise way in which the cholera was introduced on this occasion, is not known.
The disease soon spread to an extent almost unprecedented in this country: by the 15th of September the deaths exceeded a hundred a day. In nine weeks there were 1,533 deaths from cholera in a population of 86,114, being 178 to each 10,000 inhabitants; but the greater number of these deaths occurred in a few days, as 1001 took place from the 13th to the 23rd Sept. inclusive.[[23]]
Gateshead, which is situated opposite to Newcastle, on the other side of the Tyne, is supplied with the same water; and in 1849 it shared with that town a comparative immunity from cholera, whilst in the autumn of 1853, 433 persons died of that disease out of a population of 26,000, or thereabouts, being 166 to each 10,000 inhabitants.
The lowest streets in Newcastle and Gateshead are about five feet above high-water mark; and only a few streets are situated at this level, for the banks rise very abruptly, at a little distance from the river, on both sides. A great portion of each town is elevated nearly 200 feet above the river, and some parts are nearly 300 feet high; yet the Water Company supplies all these districts, and all were severely visited by the cholera, which on this occasion spared no class of the community. In the districts which are most crowded, the mortality was greatest, the deaths being much more numerous in the parishes which contained a great number of tenements consisting of a single room, than in those which consisted chiefly of houses occupied by one family.[[24]] This, however, is quite in accordance with the principles which I am throughout endeavouring to explain. A great deal of stress is laid, very properly, by the Commissioners who have reported respecting this outbreak, on the ill-arranged buildings, the defective drainage, and want of privy accommodation, in Newcastle; but it must be remembered that all these evils existed in 1849, when Newcastle escaped with less cholera than most towns,—to a greater extent than they did in 1853, for many improvements had taken place in the meantime.
In consequence of a great outcry on the part of the public, who naturally connected the great fatality of cholera in some measure with the turbidity and offensive smell of the drinking water, the Company entirely ceased to draw water from the Tyne on the 15th September; and although the Tyne water was not entirely out of the pipes for a day or two, the deaths, which had been rapidly increasing, began to diminish on the 17th, and were lessened considerably by the 20th. The following is the course of the mortality in Newcastle, in the most fatal part of the epidemic; and it began to decline at exactly the same time in Gateshead: