A letter to the Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Sheffield Union, on the prevention of cholera / by J.C. Hall.

  • Hall, John Charles, 1816-1876.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Sheffield Union, on the prevention of cholera / by J.C. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    precautions : if we are wise, Sir, we shall waste no longer the hours which yet are mercifully extended to us, and if we so employ ourselves, although we may not altogether escape the pestilence, we shall most certainly mitigate its severity, by at once removing those numerous nuisances which I know to exist in Sheffield, and which the Order in Council (putting into force the Act for the Prevention of Epidemic, Endemic, and Contagious Diseases throughout the whole of Great Britain,) dated this day, September 15th, 1853, gives you ample powers to accomplish. In a letter with which I have been favoured by Dr. Sutherland, the Physician to the General Board of Health, he points out the necessity of the authorities in every town at once commencing operations, and he adds, “ the great evil committed hy Local Author- ities the last time arose partly from, neglect of prevention while there was time for it, hut the worst of all evils arose from thinking that nothing could he done.” After urging upon me the importance of insisting upon these things in my next letter to “The Times,” the Doctor adds “not a moment should he lost in cleansing towns and whitewashing houses. If the people put off doing this, I am warranted hy the experience already acquired at Newcastle, in saying the mortality will he frightful.” * The same day I communicated this advice to the Mayor, who, in the course of an hour called upon me, most kindly listened to my suggestions, and with his usual promptitude, ordered the police to attend to some of them. He also thought I should at once communicate with you. We know, Sir, the old haunts of the Cholera in Sheffield ; and from what is taking place at Newcastle it will in all probabilty again walk in the same courts and lanes you saw it in for the most part before. In at once commencing the cleansing of them, some precautions must be taken, for in removing heaps of filth * From the 31st of August to the 18th of September, 1853, the ap- palling number of 557 have died at Newcastle from Cholera and Diarrhoea; (in 1831, in the same number of days, only 91)—no class has escaped the pestilence—all ranks have died !!