Cholera in Liverpool

In 1831 the second global cholera pandemic, the first to reach these shores, arrived in Gateshead to devastating effect. The Liverpool and Manchester press was naturally much exercised over the matter but neither city was fully prepared for the arrival of the dread disease in 1832. Liverpool history remembers the cholera riots (based on ill-conceived concerns about body-snatching for medical dissection) and Kitty Wilkinson (memorial statue in St George's Hall below) whose example helped to establish public washhouses across the city.

There were of the order of 1500 cholera cases in Liverpool in 1832 and some 500 deaths. Cholera is typically a disease of the summer months and many UK cities had one outbreak and a few had two in consecutive years.

An outbreak at Edge Hill in 1834

It transpires, however, that Liverpool had three years of cholera and that the third year (1834) saw a nasty outbreak among staff of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway Company (L&MR).

We know this thanks to a Dr JS Currie (not the famous one who was Burns's first editor) taking the time to write up a paper for the short-lived Liverpool Medical Journal. The editor squeezes in a heavily edited version almost as an apologetic afterthought.

The gist of the paper (my summary) is as follows:

Two middle-aged engineers and two boys, aged 16 and 4, had been working over a hot summer's night repairing a locomotive in an oppressively warm engine shed partly dug into a bank at Edge Hill. Unsurprisingly the group had consumed copious amounts of water to slake their thirst. The water came both from a cask served by run-off from the shed roof and separately from a channel into which water was pumped by the engines in the Moorish Arch some 300 yards distant (there is a side-issue regarding copper surfaces in these pumps). The two engineers contract cholera and die, the two boys are similarly afflicted but recover. One of the engineers appears to pass the infection to a brother who also dies. The works are supervised by John Melling (locomotive superintendent, called "Mellan" in the paper) who is interviewed by Currie. Currie ultimately blames the water from the arch as it turns out that another L&MR employee working at stables opposite the shed has also consumed water from the channel and died of cholera. Currie tells Melling to stop men drinking from the channel and the outbreak ends.

What we learn about the L&MR

There is some context here for those interested in the L&MR. The channel, for example, is presumably the culvert described by Donaghy (p.26) as taking run-off from the first Edge Hill station which was then located close to the arch and had a propensity to flood after rainfall. The culvert discharged behind the engine shops ("Melling's Yard") near the second Edge Hill station (opened 1836) which, unsurprisingly, were then also susceptible to flooding.

Quite why the pumps should discharge into the culvert is beyond my ken. The engines in the arch and adjacent water cranes would need pumped water but is this also a (presumably) non-potable supply for Melling's Yard and did it serve Crown Street as well? The men apparently drank the water with some reluctance as it tasted bad. We are not told, however, whether drinking from this source was out of the ordinary. More generally overnight working suggests there was pressure to service and repair locomotives, many of which were probably suffering from protracted hard working by this stage.

The exact location of the engine shed is difficult to determine but I would guess that it is on the south side of the track, likewise then the channel. If the shed was partially embedded in a bank, it may have been at the end of a cutting and maps of post-1834 show at that at different times there were two cuttings, one short, one long, at what might be construed as the "back" of the works though neither map shows definitive evidence of a shed or stables. More research needed.

Currie second-guesses Snow in 1834

The cholera story itself is intriguing on several counts. Firstly, the persistence of cholera into 1834 was unexpected but corroborated by examining the records of the Liverpool Necropolis at Low Hill as published by the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk project. These show that roughly half as many burials were attributed to cholera in 1833 as in 1832 with roughly the same number again in 1834. Clearly the source of the cholera is unknowable now. Was it reintroduced by locals, ship passengers or wildlife (e.g. birds), or did it persist in the environment? All we can say for sure is that it disappeared in 1835 (which intriguingly had a colder winter than the previous few years).

Currie's conclusion (on limited evidence) that the infection had passed between the brothers, i.e. that cholera was contagious, ran contrary to the miasma theory that was aggressively promoted by some Liverpool medics at the time. His recommendation that the men stop drinking the water shows his belief that contaminated water was the culprit and pre-dates John Snow's Broad Street pump intervention by some 20 years. It seems unlikely that Currie was the only medic to reach this type of conclusion but it is still disturbing when one considers how many lives cholera would ultimately claim (always assuming, of course, that a clean water source could have been made available to avert this).

Guarded coverage of the disease in the local press?

The relative lack of press interest in 1834 may reflect the (very) superficial nature of the literature search made thus far or that by this time cholera was no longer newsworthy, the city having adapted to the presence of yet another infectious disease. One cannot help wondering, however, whether some news management was being undertaken, either from the perspective of trade or public order.

For example, the Manchester Guardian had this to say on October 18 1834 :

CHOLERA -- We have said as little as possible in regard to this disease during the present autumn, from a desire to avoid creating any thing like an alarm; and, indeed, so far as regards this town (Manchester), we have no reason to suppose that the malady exists here in any very material degre. We have had, however, during the present week, accounts from Bolton and Bury (nearby towns), which lead us to fear that in some of the vicinities of those towns it prevails to a considerable extent, and is of a very malignant character.

It would seem therefore that Liverpool was not exceptional in experiencing cholera in 1834. Even so, the presence of the disease must have been a concern in terms of the ability of the L&MR both to operate profitably (there was a slight dip in the share price in 1832) and to continue the development of its presence at Liverpool and Edge Hill.

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