1854 Broad Street Cholera Outbreak II

While public officials were willing to remove the handle of the Broad Street Pump, they were not inclined to believe in Snow’s theory of cholera being a water-borne disease. Considering that Snow was unable to pinpoint the source of contamination, the theory lacked even more credibility, especially as officials challenged that “there was no way sewage from town pipes leaked into the pump” (Tuthill, 2003, p. 20). As a result, no actions were taken to clean up the cesspools and River Thames.

It was only when Reverend Henry Whitehead investigated further that the source of contamination was narrowed down. Originally intending to prove that the cholera outbreak was a result of divine intervention, Whitehead soon located the index case, otherwise known as “patient zero”. On 40 Broad Street, a woman living there had lost her five-month-old to cholera. The woman washed her child’s diapers and dumped the contaminated water into a leaking cesspool three feet away from the Broad Street Pump (Tuthill, 2003). This was believed to be the origin of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak, though the specifics on how the leaking cesspool contaminated the pump were not established.

Yet, even after a year, no attempts were made to improve the sanitation and living conditions of Soho (Summers, 1989). Cesspools remained to be seen everywhere, and houses were located close to these cesspools as the population continued to increase, resulting in greater overcrowding. Only years after, public officials finally took action to improve the sanitation and living conditions of Soho. The inaction of public officials is not unique to the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. In many pollution incidences, even today, it is precisely the inaction of certain actors, whether the state, corporations or local communities, that the impacts of pollution are prolonged as none are willing to be held accountable. This often affects the lower-income groups more severely, as they lack the resources to move away from polluted sites, as demonstrated in the Broad Street cholera outbreak.

In 1897, chlorine was first used in English water facilities as a disinfectant (Tulchinsky, 2018). Eventually, filtration and chlorination became standard treatments for drinking water, and death rates resulting from water-borne diseases decreased significantly.

References

Summers, J. (1989). Broad Street Pump Outbreak. University of California, Los Angeles. https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/broadstreetpump.html

Tulchinsky, T. H. (2018). John Snow, Cholera, the Broad Street Pump; Waterborne Diseases Then and Now. Case Studies in Public Health, 77–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804571-8.00017-2

Tuthill, K. (2003). John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic. University of California, Los Angeles. https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowcricketarticle.html