Cholera Morbus:
Death Accusing the Rich of Tyranny.
They are killing the Poor, a Duty
Which belongs to Him.
Now this morning, if you look down High Street, Death Accuses the Rich as far as the eye can see. The skeleton shakes his spear into the litigious window of Odgen and Gray, Attorneys at Law; he upbraids mammon outside the gate of Mr. Backhouse’s bank. From Place Shipping to Lamb and Co. coal owners, cholera morbus fearlessly challenges the potentates of Sunderland.
A restless crowd has gathered before the poster nailed upon the door of the Exchange, where hundreds press in to read it or have it read to them. No one knows who paid to have the posters printed or who risked prison to put them up, but you might be certain just about every poor man in the crowd wishes it had been himself; just as every poor woman dependent on his wages gives thanks it was not. But why should a crowd have gathered around this particular sign when, as we noted, they litter all of High Street? Let’s just say if a perverse meteor took a fancy to strike the Corn Exchange today, the widows woefully picking through the ruins would number among the wealthiest in Sunderland. The entire social register has gathered inside; and not only the town’s prominent merchants and shipowners, but even our neighborhood’s offering to the House of Lords, the Marquis of Londonderry. As luck would have it, these worthies have come together to contend and vote over the exact theme posted upon the Exchange door: the Board of Health, chaired by Dr. Daun, His Majesty’s emissary from London, has called a meeting to address the cholera morbus.
“Please let me through,” commands an unshaven Dr. Henry Chiver, holding his breath against the stench of the crowd. “I have business here.”
“He has business here,” one man mocks. “They’re killin’ us too slowly, so a meeting’s been called to speed up the poisoning!”
A young man, no older than twenty, lanky and long-faced, elbows Henry in the ribs. “Hey there, mister, I wrote a song. Listen up, ye might learn somethin’!” Henry tries to back away, but no matter which way he moves, he finds himself walled in by corduroy and chintz. The grinning young man elbows himself a space and bellows loudly in a thick East End accent:
My sinkers! We’re all in a fine hobble now, Since the cholera com to our river Aw wadn’t hae car’d if’twas ought that one knew But the outlandish name maks one all shiver! Our doctors are all in a deuce of a way And some says they’ve Clannied to wrong us; But I think we’ll all curse the Daun o’ that day The block-headed Board com among us!
In time to his song, he improvises a shuffling dance, laughing oafishly and slapping his bony knees. With a cheer, his compatriots fling pennies at him, calling for more verses.
“What d’ye say, sir?” he bows, holding out his cap to Henry. “Spare a penny for a poor daft singer?”
“Get out of my way,” Henry cries, digging in his shoulder and tunneling toward the Exchange entrance. A nervous-looking porter cracks the door and lets him squeeze through. We’ve already sent word to the constables, sir, the porter announces. They should be here any minute.
Down the hall, Henry squeezes through a tight corridor of silk and brushed wool, only slightly less odoriferous than the throng on the street. He spots his uncle across the mobbed room, seated near the podium, where Death (as he Accuses the Rich) is being taken down a peg by a furious Dr. Daun.
“This is the response to our sanitation bulletins,” shouts the chairman, shaking a copy of the offending poster, ripped from his own front door this morning. “Suspicion and subversion! We are failing to convince them of our seriousness.”
“There you are,” says Dr. Clanny when Henry at last reaches him and takes up perch on his uncle’s armrest. He sizes up his nephew’s ragged cheek and frowns. “I came round to your house yesterday but you weren’t home.”
“Went for a drive in the country,” Henry replies evasively. “I needed some air.”
“We could have used you. Eight more cases yesterday.”
“I am sorry,” Henry apologizes, and quickly changes the subject. “What have I missed?”
“Not much,” Clanny informs him over the chairman’s harangue. “Reading of the last minutes. Roll call. Seems everyone with more than five pounds to his name is here today.”
Henry looks out upon the roiling sea of powdered wigs and romantic spit curls, the tightly trousered leg chafing against the stolid knickered one. Last century is always depressingly in attendance at meetings like this, and while Henry might wax poetic over candlelit theatres or antique furniture, his appreciation for the past does not extend to its fashions. The musty, confining old clothes trap disease like pig blankets, while the false hair breeds biting fleas and lice. Against the suffocating heat, a few men have de-wigged, and fan their flushed red faces. Score one for the old-fashioned: the modern men sweat unrelieved.
“This poster is positive proof our message is being ignored,” shouts Daun, crumbling Death into a tight ball and heaving him at the floor. “If we cannot convince the poor that cholera walks among them, they will never protect themselves! And if they don’t protect themselves, we are done for.”
In the crowd, Henry recognizes many familiar faces from his early days in Sunderland when he was more frequently invited to dinner. Mr. Thomas Brunton, proud owner of a lime kiln, shipyard, and colliery, is here at the side of his friend Mr. William Chaytor, who escorted Audrey from the theatre the night Henry attended Jack Crawford. Old Mr. Dixon (owner of Gustine’s pottery) slumps in the corner, looking ready to faint from the heat, while his son and heir has given up and sits cross-legged on the floor. In a plush chair just on the other side of the podium, languid Charles William
III
, the Marquis of Londonderry, observes Dr. Daun as if the chairman were one of those fascinatingly horrid animalculae beneath a microscope. The Marquis’ thoughtless elegance (the tight trousered style Henry prefers, the black cashmere frock coat, the velvet cravat) bespeaks his income (or at least that of his wife) as clearly as the well-worn uniform of the chairman announces him to be an army surgeon on half-pay.
“I am confused, Doctor.” John Hepple, Albion and British Ship Insurance, takes the floor. “If this disease is so damned contagious, why haven’t I got it? Or you? Or Lord Londonderry there? Our grandparents, God rest their souls, many of ‘em remembered the last plague, and this seems to have nothing on it. Could we not be suffering with plain old English cholera, or the summer diarrhea?”
Dr. Kell, surgeon to the 82nd Reserve Regiment, and the only one in the room who has any previous experience at all with the cholera, rises to address the question. This gentleman saw what havoc an epidemic wreaked on the troops in Jessore and wasted no time locking down the garrison as tight as a convent.
“Diseases have their nature,” says Kell, “but they are deeply rooted in the nature of man. This particular disease seems to shun the healthy and upright in favor of those who are dissolute and wicked. The very old and very young seem to be especially adversely affected, yet I have also known it to take out soldiers in their prime. That said, having treated the disease, here and abroad, I cannot deny that what we have in Sunderland is the same cholera that has devastated the Continent. While the symptoms are similar to summer diarrhea, vomiting, cramping, loose stool,” says Kell, warming to the subject, “cholera morbus is far more deadlyit produces its own sort of rice water stool”
“Please, please, Dr. Kell,” demands Lord Londonderry, putting up his hand impatiently. “As fascinating as I find this discussion of bowel movements, I insist we stick to the topic at hand. We are here to discuss the Quarantine and how soon we might see it lifted.”
“Thank you, Lord Londonderry, for recalling our attention,” says Daun starchily. “As most of you know, on the recommendation of our Board of Health, His Majesty has just sent a man-o’-war to patrol the harbour and enforce a second Quarantine. It has been difficult waiting fifteen days to receive imports, and we know it will be a far greater hardship on the port businesses to wait another fifteen days to export their goods, but in light of the contagiousness of this disease”
“Wait a minute!” shouts John Harkas, sawmill owner. “My doctor told me if everyone would just stay away from oysters and cucumbers we wouldn’t number a case among us.”
“There is a great debate on the contagiousness of the disease, Mr. Harkas,” answers the chairman. “Our medical community is split on whether it was imported or generated on local soil. Some believe it can be transmitted from person to person and thus we need the Quarantine; others that we take it straight from the atmosphere, and no Quarantine can help.”
“Seems to me if it could go either way, why penalize us?” replies Harkas. “If I can’t get my lumber out, I’ll go broke!”
The room erupts in agreement.
“Why should the world wait fifteen days for Sunderland’s coal when they might have Wigan’s in three?” pipes up Mr. Thomas Brunton of lime, shipyards, and coal. “Not to mention the extra costs to merchants when after two weeks their provisions rot and spoil, when their water turns and their meat must be heaved overboard. The Quarantine has crippled us, sir, and this Board is to blame!”
For some five minutes, the chairman cannot make himself heard over the stomping and shouting, and the cries for the Board’s impeachment. “Have you no thought for your brothers and sisters in the rest of England?” shouts Daun, pounding the podium for order. “It is too late for us. We are already contaminated. But we must not export certain death to the realm because of our own greed.”
Henry squirms against his uncle’s comfortable chair. If the disease had targeted the rich, he knows they would not be here today, examining their consciences. The harbour would be locked tight, and the wealthy fled to the country; only because cholera preys on the undesirable do they have the luxury of debate.
“It is all immaterial now,” says the Marquis of Londonderry lazily, and out of respect, the room quickly quiets. “I have taken it upon myself to write the London Standard, stating that any report claiming the Asiatic cholera or the cholera morbus has been introduced into this town is a most wicked and malicious falsehood. I have further condemned the measures taken by His Majesty’s government requiring a fifteen-day quarantine on ships entering and now departing Sunderland as perfectly unnecessary and uncalled for, especially when unlimited communication by coach and foot is permitted in every other part of the kingdom. And I concluded my letter by assuring them the health of Sunderland has never been better, with my humble apologies for any misapprehensions caused by our overanxious medical men. I have been informed the letter will run this week.”
“You have already posted the letter, my lord, without first consulting the Board of Health?” Dr. Daun can barely contain his anger. “Do you realize that if we argue cholera is not here, we have absolutely no authority to enforce the Sanitary Codes? How do you expect us to protect the poor?”
“I don’t expect. I expect them to get back to work.”
“I must object, sir,” Daun says. “By now denying the existence of this dread diseaseafter we have broadcast its arrivalyou have not only made us a laughingstock before the whole country, you have personally signed a death warrant for the entire East End.”
“Exactly how long do you think we can keep the East End idle before it rises in revolt?” demands Londonderry, for the first time this afternoon losing his composure. “You think the cholera is killing them? Starvation will kill them quicker; and the hungrier they get, the more they’ll cry for our flesh. Fully employed, they barely survive from day to day. Two weeks out of work is death to them!”
“Pardon me, sir.” Henry leaps to his feet, no longer able to keep quiet. “You couch your desires in concern for the poor, yet it is you who sets their meagre wages. Is it not your own coal interests you are protecting? So long as the port is open and you make money, you do not care if they live or die.”
“Young man,” Lord Londonderry returns scathingly. “I am well acquainted with your history. Do not speak to me of concern for the poor. They might die in my employ, but at least I do not pay to have them murdered.”
Silenced, a crimson-cheeked Henry trembles above the impassive Marquis, while someone across the room smothers a snigger. Clanny sees his nephew’s hand curl into a fist and swiftly rises to diffuse the situation.
“Can we not compromise?” suggests Dr. Clanny, firmly pressing Henry back into his chair. “Can we not say a disease possessing the symptoms of cholera morbus is now existing in this town, but there are no grounds for imagining it has been imported? It appears to have arisen from atmospherical distemperature and acts in most cases only upon persons weakened by want of wholesome food and clothing. We could say the further interruption of port commerce will only extend the disease by depriving the industrious poor of their bread and thus placing their families in the depths of misery and distress.”
“Clanny, just because you believe this thing sprang up from thin air doesn’t mean we can ignore the fact it is almost certainly contagious,” says Kell.
“I am not saying it’s not contagious,” Clanny argues, “but that it may not be imported. It arose naturally on English soil, helped by excess carbon in conjunction with electrical storms”
“We are not here to debate the nature of this disease, contagionist or anticontagionist,” interrupts the chairman. “We are here to discuss the Quarantine.”
“So we are resolved,” states the Marquis, rising and imperiously straightening his cashmere cutaway. “Let us put it to the vote. All those who say Sunderland is healthy, say ‘Aye.’”
“Gentlemen, wait!” Dr. Daun implores in a final desperate plea. “Let us imagine cholera confines itself only to the poor and never darkens the door of a single householder in Bishopwearmouth. Are you never to leave the house? Are your servants never to shop? And when your cook has gone out into the infected market, when she brushes up against one whom you, today, have cast off, will you not hesitate with the fork to your lips and fear the very food upon your plate? The lower classes are part of your town; you cannot avoid them. You cannot wish this disease away. If you will not help us enforce the Sanitary Codes for their sake, think, then, to your own.”