1.D. 1776 
1850. 
nN AN. 
sanitary 
districts, 
and after 
thorough 
SNQULTY 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
imes of pestilence, were serious measures taken to improve 
industrial dwellings and to remedy the defective sanitation of 
our great towns, 
There is a curious parallelism between the history of the 
irst great outbreak of cholera in Europe and the accounts of 
the Black Death; though there are also marked differences. 
Each originated in the East, though not at the same point; 
sach travelled in the course of trade to Europe, though along 
lifferent routes; and each ran a most devastating course 
when it reached this island, though one ravaged the country 
generally, and the other fastened especially on the insanitary 
areas of towns, and the poorest and famished inhabitants. 
The character of the disease was well known to medical men; 
they watched its course from Bombay through Astrakhan to 
Riga, and predicted with considerable accuracy the points 
which it was likely to attack The first case was noticed at 
Sunderland in 1831; from that place it seems to have spread 
through the Tyme district; and outbreaks followed shortly 
after in many of the seaport towns and manufacturing 
listricts?, The most serious epidemic occurred at Bilston in 
she Black Country, where out of a population of 14,492 there 
were no fewer than 3,568 cases in seven weeks, and of these 
742 proved fatal. The textile districts round Manchester 
and in the West Riding suffered severely, and the outbreak 
in Glasgow was very serious. Typhoid had been prevalent 
in similar areas for many years, and nothing had been done; 
and even after the cholera scare, some years elapsed before 
it was felt requisite to take general action in regard to 
insanitary conditions®. Public opinion was gradually im- 
pressed, as to the necessity of Governmental action, by the 
investigations instituted by the Royal Commissioners for 
anquiring into the state of large towns and populous districts; 
they insisted that much of the disease in the country was due 
to preventable canses. and that, in many districts, improved 
308 
t R. Orton, An Essay on the Epidemic Cholera of India (1831), 462—469. 
% Compare the table in Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, 11. 821. 
3 The influence of the cholera epidemic in 1831 in leading to some immediate 
though minor reforms locally, and the effect of the later visitations in 1849 and 
1854 in inspiring the Legislature to renewed activity, is pointed out in the Second 
Report of the Roual Sanitary Commission (1871), xxxv. 10—14