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4
It is impossible to overlook the classes more likely to be affected by the
water hypothesis, equally as it is of the estimation in which it is commonly
received. I have already said, and to this I adhere, that nineteen out of
twenty of the adults who have perished were not water-drinkers even occasionally,
except in the ordinary cooking of their food- Then again, those
who have been water-drinkers, teetotallers especially, have been pre-eminently
exempt. The City of London Temperance Society, at the head of which is
the Chamberlain, Mr. Scott, informs me, through their Secretary, that out of
several hundreds, a large body of whom live in the Tower Hamlets, only
three, one man and two women, and those under exceptional circumstance*,
have died from the commencement of the epidemic. I am acquainted with
numbers of families, some with filtration, others without, who have gone on
drinking water all the season without almost a single case of diarrhona. The
Sons of Phoenix, a Total Abstinence Society, all living within the limits of
the East London water, numbering 1,250 besides their families, have lost
only two of the fraternity from the Cholera. The United Phoenix, another
society of 1,400 members, have only lost three males and two females. At
a brass-founder's in the Back-road, a number of men are employed, an occupation
inducing great thirst, and I am credibly informed that each man during the
summer was in the habit daily of drinking a gallon of water on the average,
without a single case of diarrhoea occurring. At 14, Love Lane, Ratcliff, the
mother, husband, and sister died, who were not drinkers of water, but
practised moderation. The five children escaped altogether from an attack
of diarrhoea, while, to use her own words, they were doing nothing else but
" drinking water all the summer and all day long."* Let me add, pretty
generally amongst all classes the theory of the water poison is repudiated,
especially among the poor, who have chiefly felt the shock ; and this opinion
is very commonly shared by professional men.
I have already expressed an opinion that the great local nuisances have
probably had their part quite as much as the water, and much more,
in the production of Cholera. The Lea Cut and Regent's Canal were intolerable
during the hot weather in June, when on one day the thermometer was 165
degrees in the sun. Then look at the Bow Creek, into which was pumping
all this time the sewage of 70,000 inhabitants, including Stratford, West Ham,
and all about Victoria Dock. And am I to be told that such abominations
* Many such cases are found.