Genealogy Chat

I recently saw in a 'did you know' column in a newspaper that there was a cholera epidemic in britain in the summer of 1849, more than 33000 people died 13000 of whom were from London. So if you are looking for people who disappeared around that time this is what might have happened to them as I believe they were not always given single burials. I don't know if there would be a list of them anywhere. Ann Glos

There was more than one cholera epidemic I believe. Although the population of London was smaller, many people lived in overcrowded conditions and shared water from a common pump, so diseases spread easily. Cholera was thought to be caused by a "bad smell" until Dr John Snow proved it was water-borne by the simple expedient of removing a pump handle from a suspected water supply. I don't know how the deaths were recorded, but during the plague of 1665, there were "Bills of Mortality" published weekly. One of them (in a book about the fire of London) gives some causes of death we would recognise: aged, cancer, childbed, drown'd, smallpox, jaundice, murder. Here are some that seem a bit bizarre: frightened, grief, griping in the guts, lethargy, teeth, winde! Helen