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31
Woodford, Wanstead, Leytonstone, Buckhurst Hill.
North Woolwich, and Silvertown,* were absolutely
untouched by the disease, notwithstanding that
they received the same water, and at the same
time.
More remarkable still, there were places in the
very heart of the cholera field, and others close adjoining
it, where the residents received the same
suspected water, and used it freely, without suffering
in the least degree. In the Limehouse School,
around which the cholera was frightfully fatal,
there were 400 children who drank the same water
as their neighbours, and yet there was not even a
case of diarrhœa among them. In the London
Hospital, which is also in the heart of the cholera
field, for it is surrounded by the districts of Whitechapel,
Bethnal Green, Mile End Old Town, and
St. George's-in-the-East, there was an average resident
population of 463 persons, and, although
they drank freely of the unfiltered East London
water, yet there was not a case of illness among
them.†
*Silvertown was affected towards the end of the epidemic, when no
water theory could account for it.
†574 cases of cholera were treated in the Hospital, but they were all
brought into it sick of the disease. A nurse who lived out of the Hospital
died of the disease.