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low creatures dying around, knowing the while of the power at their command
to check the pestilence.*
But now at length we are told it is a very easy thing to purify the water
and stop the Cholera: dates and all are given to mark the achievements of
only two days. All along it has been said to be a slow business, but now it
is done in hot haste. On the 15th of September and 18th of August it is
said to be heavy work—a wearisome affair, as seen in the tea-pot illustration,
this water cleansing; on the 1st of August the engineer, after the carpeting,
thinks nothing of it, but goes away, and in just two days Cholera and water,
sets all to rights. Now what is wanted to be known is, if the sage aphorisms,
the problem, and all were truo on the 18th of August and 15th of
September, by what power on earth was the engineer enabled to do the feats
he did in direct contradiction on the 1st of August ?
These things are hard to understand, in fact they are impossible ; an
operation which is essentially slow in September, under the same conditions
could not be quick on the 1st of August; and if there were nothing else in
the way, there remains no alternative but at once to put aside these inconsistencies
and contradictions, as having no part whatever in budding up a true
theory of the " explosion" in the East of London.
Now what are the facts to explain this great change on, and following the
1st of August? The meteorology itself was changed, and with it all was
changed. The atmosphere was softened, the wind was shifted, and from a
long month E. and N.E., now veered round to the "West; the temperature
fell; from a drought of weeks in succession, moisture followed ; and on this
1st of August, gently at first, but day by day afterwards, rain fell, till at last
there was rain in abundance. See further on this matter in Table 1 of
Appendix.
These were the changes, and these alone, that "stayed the plagueand
but for these, all the engineering craft on the notable 1st of August would
have been in vain; if anything had been attempted, which I wholly disbelieve,
and the mortality would have gone on till Christmas, in spite of all the recondite
speculations of the Cholera detectives in the Strand and the West.
In the latter part of July, 1866, in the midst of the epidemic, when mens'
hearts were quailing with fear, while earnest in their duty, before the whole
Cholera Committee, the following conversation took place, which will be
*Of the three Commissions and Committees of Enquiry instituted for the purpose of ascertaining
in part the relationship of the water supply to Cholera, not one has attributed it to the water, without
including the filth and nuisances of the East as largely entering into the chain of causation.—Vide
Report of House of Commons, Report on Water Supply, Heuse of Lords, and Report of Metropolitan