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35
The plague, like some few other diseases which formerly ravaged this
country and decimated the population, apparently unchecked by the
intervention of man, is now, happily, only known historically; but cholera,
that strange product of still stranger oriental influences, has fallen upon
us on two or three occasions within the last century with a suddenness
and force that has severely tested the victory which it had been fondly
hoped advancing civilization had obtained over all such deplorable visitations.
From our resolution to combat the very approach of this new foe;
from our determination to present as many barriers as science could possibly
devise against its repeated invasions—limited as were sometimes the
means placed at the disposal of those who were appointed to do actual
battle with the enemy—the best results were often known to spring; and
one can hardly conceive any but the most prejudiced or the most ignorant
clinging, in this enlightened age, to the notion that the calamitous results
of human error and social ignorance in superstitious times, had been the
inevitable inflictions of Providence, aud that therefore in all future epidemics
it would be wiser and better to suffer every baneful influence to exert
itself upon the population unheeded and unopposed.
Severe as was the infliction of cholera upon its invasion of the Wandsworth
District in 1848-9, it progressively underwent a remarkable decrease,
as well in the number of persons affected as in the intensity of the affection
itself, and upon its subsequent visitation in 1854, nothing could be more
manifest than that the experience gained in both the medical and hygienic
treatment of the disease had placed a barrier to its progress beyond certain
limits, which, there is every reason to believe it would have transgressed
but for the promulgation of better sanitary regulations, the regard paid
to the removal of nuisances, and the adoption of more effective preventive
measures in the interval.
were literally true, and not a mere figure of speech, we can scarcely wonder at the
unceremonious manner in which the survivors disposed of their deceased fellow-townsfolk.
"1625.—Paid the carpenters for a barrow to carry the people who died of the
sicknesse to church to bury them, 5s. 0d."
The sanitary regulations of these periods were often, however, of a very stringent
character, and certainly were somewhat in advance of the age as measures of precaution
against the spread of disease. Amongst some MS. papers in the Palace Library at
Lambeth, is the copy of an order which would not have disgraced a modern sanitary
board. Divesting this document of its quaint verbiage, it orders, "That the houses of
such persons as could not be conveniently sent to the pest-houses should be shut up and
guarded by a warden, a red cross being affixed to the door; that if any person was
required to keep within an infected house should go abroad, he or she should be immediately
apprehended and sent to the pest-house, not being suffered to return to his own
dwelling; that when a visited house was opened a white cross should be affixed to the
door, with a bill in writing signifying how long it was since the last person died there,
which writing should remain 40 days, during which time the goods and rooms should he
aired and fumed with brimstone and other wholesome fumes; that the churchwardens
of each parish should take care to cover their churchyards with unslaked lime 12 inches
thick, and the like quautity of gravel to prevent noxious vapours from exhaling; and
that the wardens attending visited houses should warn passengers not to approach too
near."
In addition to these measures, there were very great restrictions placed on the diet of
the sick, and severe punishment awarded to drunkards. We must do our ancestors the
justice then to believe that they were fully alive to the necessity of adopting very
stringent measures against this dreaded pestilence. If some of these measures were not
over scientific, they were, at least, singularly practical, and as such, claim our admiration,
seeing that they were put in force in an age noted rather for its superstition than its
philpsophy.