Written by Tristan, staff member, Central Library
It’s October, and that means it’s scary season! And nothing helps you prepare for Halloween like a good horror movie. Infection stories make up a good portion of horror plot points – just look at the films 28 Days Later, Contagion, or Cabin Fever. But we shouldn’t forget that these films are inspired by reality: viruses and bacteria can be deadly.
Horror can come in the form of a threat to our existence, and real-life events can be the inspiration for stories meant to chill the bones. Let’s look at one that hit a bit too close to home in the 1800s: cholera.
The Disease
The name “cholera” is derived from the Greek word “khole”, meaning “bile”. The name was chosen due to its symptoms and an outdated medical practice called the four humors theory. This theory suggested that the afflicted had excess bile that they needed to expel. In reality, cholera is caused by strains of Vibrio cholerae, a bacterium that spreads through ingesting contaminated water through drinking, or by eating foods like raw seafood. The bacteria creates a toxin that spreads through the digestive tract. While most people with the illness either carry it without symptoms or suffer mild diarrhea, others develop severe vomiting and diarrhea that require intensive rehydration regimens and antibiotics (Mayo Clinic). The illness can kill its victims in under twelve hours, and in as few as five as shown by the above picture.
The word “cholera” evokes bygone eras, but it is still very much a threat in countries where clean water is scarce. The World Health Organization estimates that cholera causes 21,000 to 143,000 deaths per year worldwide, and there are anywhere from 1.3 to 4 million cases every year. Oral cholera vaccines have played a key role in reducing its spread in areas without proper hygiene and access to safe water. (World Health Organization)
Lessons about health and safety are seldom learned without death, and in an era before modern medicine, it was only a matter of time before a port city like Halifax would be stricken by cholera.
City of Halifax
In late August of 1834, the first outbreak would hit Halifax. It is not entirely clear whether it spread from Lower Canada (now the eastern half of Quebec, most of Labrador, and later the lower part of Ontario), if it travelled with Irish immigrants crowded on “coffin ships”, or if it made its way to Halifax through infected military personnel in the First Battalion Rifle Brigade.
Approximately 659 people died from the disease (CBC News). Dalhousie College was temporarily used as a cholera hospital for the town’s infected, and nurses were hired with promises of “liberal wages”.
At the time, the nature of cholera was very much a mystery; thus, medical advice could range from reasonable but not enough to downright harmful. More reasonable remedies included fresh air, personal cleanliness, and removing standing water (Geri Walton). Harmful remedies included mustard plasters, emetics, and calomel. (Science Museum) Mustard plasters were cloths saturated in ground mustard, designed to irritate and bring heat to affected areas, but would often lead to chemical burns and blisters if left for too long (Healthline). Emetics stimulated vomiting, even though the patients were often already vomiting, the idea being to balance the victim’s humours (The Mystery of the Blue Death). Calomel was another name for mercury chloride, a mercury salt, long used in medicine as a purgative until safer compounds became available (Encyclopedia Britannica).
At the time, outside forces like religious organizations and social groups distracted from the science of medicine. Dr. James C. Hume suggested temperance–abstinence from alcohol and other vices–as a cure and preventative of cholera in the Acadian Recorder from 26 August 1834. Little did they know that the beer was safer than the water! This was due to the steps needed to make beer, like boiling the water and adding hops. Also, the alcohol itself acted as an antiseptic.
The pressure towards temperance was such that Halifax soon had two Temperance Societies, one for youth and one for adults.
As it was the early days of record-keeping, not many of the victims of cholera were recorded as such. Very few of the dead had the cause of death recorded on their gravestones, probably due to the aforementioned stigma and assumption of intemperance. Catherine Smith is an exception. She passed away from her illness on 20 September 1834. She was buried in Camp Hill Cemetery, the cemetery near Robie Street and the Halifax Infirmary.
Other victims of the outbreak, such as Michiel Donovan and his daughter Eliza, were buried at the Old Burying Grounds on the corner of Spring Garden and Barrington. While the cause of death wasn’t mentioned on the Donovan grave, the close time between the deaths (28 August for Michiel, 10 September for Eliza) may be indicative of a father and daughter killed by the dreaded disease. If you see a grave in either of these cemeteries with a death date in late August or in September of 1834, there is a good chance it was someone who died of cholera.
McNabs Island
The second outbreak occurred in 1866 and originated among passengers aboard the S.S. England. The S.S. England was headed for New York and was overfilled with approximately 1200 Irish and German emigrants, but made a stop in Halifax due to a sudden outbreak of cholera on board that jeopardized the engineers (Acadiensis).
Having learned their lesson from the first cholera outbreak, port authorities ordered the S.S. England to shelter at McNabs Island, where passengers would be unloaded to allow sanitation efforts. About 400 sickly passengers were put on the Pyramus, a then-unused naval ship anchored near Findlay’s Wharf. Healthier passengers were housed with workers building Fort Ives. Little Thrum Cap (at the very south, across from York Redoubt) and Hugonin’s Point (northwest of McNabs Island, across from Point Pleasant Park) were used as burial sites. According to the Friends of McNabs Island, the graves at the latter site were dug using labour from the “city prison”, which may have been Rockhead Prison near present-day Novalea Drive. An estimated 200 victims were buried at these grave sites; due to erosion eventually washing away the island, the graves at Little Thrum Cap would eventually disappear into the sea.
The port health officer at the time, Dr. John Slayter, observed the effects of cholera on its victims and described them in grim detail:
The illness is virulent, causing death often in less than 12 hours. […] They have cramps in their stomach and legs […], gangrene, cold extremities, vomiting and purging, but during the first stages when aroused they brighten up. Their hands and feet get purple, pulse is small from the beginning, tongue is whitish but not thickly furrowed. There is some suppression of urine. They die from [severe dehydration and shock, the word “collapse” is used here]. When dead, their legs and hands are twisted up and very hard to straighten in coffins.
Friends of McNabs Island
He also wrote to Dr. Charles Tupper that the “strong seize [food] and the sick and the old who have no friends suffer […] Frank Garvie [another physician] and myself were ashore […] getting women and children in from the Woods, they having been refused admittance into the tents on account of their not having friends.” (Friends of McNabs Island)
On April 16, 1866, he experienced the very thing he was trying to fight firsthand, and he died of cholera the following day.
Soldiers were posted on the Island to keep the infected from escaping to the shore, and they did their best to establish a semblance of order among those isolated on McNabs Island. Cholera was tough on the body and the psyche, even among those who carried it without symptoms (Friends of McNabs Island). The quarantine was not entirely successful: a little girl on Inglis Street contracted cholera and died when her mother made a dress out of canvas that washed ashore after being dumped off the ship. (CBC)
Clearing the Water
Globally, there have been seven cholera pandemics, with one still happening today. The Halifax outbreak in 1834 occurred during the second world cholera pandemic, also known as the Asiatic cholera pandemic, due to its suspected origin in the Ganges Delta. This pandemic lasted from 1826 to 1849, with no solid numbers on how many people died in total. What is known is that it killed over 2,220 people in Quebec, and 74,000 across England and Wales. (CBC)
The 1866 outbreak on McNabs Island was part of the fourth world cholera pandemic, which spanned from 1863 to 1875. Like the second pandemic, this one also started in the Ganges Delta. It is theorized that Indian Muslims on a voyage to Mecca carried it to the Middle East, and it spread from there. While a total figure for this pandemic is also unknown, at least 30,000 of the pilgrims and 90,000 Russians died in this outbreak. (CBC)
It was during the third world pandemic (c.1850-1860) that a hero would rise up. Dr. John Snow was born in York, England, on 15 March 1813, the son of a coal yard labourer (Encyclopedia Britannica). At age 14, he would begin his medical career through apprenticeships. While still in training in 1831, Snow was introduced to the deadly, dehydrating spectre that was cholera for the first time. In this case, the disease was attacking a group of coal miners. It was a sight that would leave a lasting impression.
Snow earned his medical degree from the University of London in 1844, and in 1849, he became a licensed specialist with the Royal College of Physicians. He settled and practiced in the Soho region of London, the neighbourhood between Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Piccadilly Circus, and Regent Street. His first specialty was anesthesia, and he eventually developed the Snow Mask, a device that gave greater control in administering ether or chloroform (Wood Library Museum). He wrote a book titled On Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, which would be posthumously published in 1858.
During the second world cholera pandemic, Dr. Snow turned his focus to the epidemiology of cholera. He helped form the London Epidemiological Society so that he and other physicians could investigate the spread of deadly illnesses and develop plans to combat them and reduce their spread. There were two theories on the spread of illness: the more popular miasma theory stated that diseases were spread by “bad air”, and the less popular germ theory that blamed microbes or some other unseen particle. (World History)
Dr. Snow conducted two experiments during the 1853-1855 cholera epidemic in London. The first outbreak he studied occurred around the Broad Street water pump, the well of which had been dug close to a cesspit containing water that was used to wash a sick baby’s diaper (Global Health Now). The “Grand Experiment” traced where affected and unaffected households sourced their water (Royal College of Surgeons of England).
The “Ghost Map”, where the red dot marks the Broad Street public water pump and the black bars represent cholera cases. (Image from hauntedwalk.com)
Households that avoided cholera were serviced by the Lambeth Water Company, which drew their water from the upper Thames, whereas the ones that were hit were sourced by the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company, which got their water from polluted areas of the Thames within the centre of London. His studies included what is now called the “Ghost Map”, which showed fatalities and infections relative to where people got their drinking water (John Snow and the Ghost Map).
Once the Broad Street pump was identified as the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak, Dr. Snow successfully petitioned to have the handle removed to prevent anyone else from using the contaminated water. This incident, along with the Great Stink of 1858, demonstrated the need for more sophisticated sewer systems. The Great Stink occurred when sewage in the Thames fermented in the summer sun, creating a stench so foul that the city considered moving Parliament from its recently constructed riverside building (The Great Stink…). Joseph Bazalgette, a civil engineer, would devise a sewer system that is still in use in London today, though it is slowly getting overloaded by London’s growth and climate change (How Bazalgette Built London’s First Super-Sewer).
Back in Halifax, the city's water supply system was unmaintained, struggling to meet the demands of a growing port city. The Halifax Water Company, formed in 1844, planned and installed a gravity-fed water system from Long Lake and Chain Lakes. A privately owned company took over in 1861 and operated the system for another 75 years, but never made improvements or addressed ongoing issues, such as water waste. In 1943, the water system was in dire need of repair and revamping, especially after the Great Depression and World Wars I and II. Two years later, in 1945, the Public Service Commission (later renamed the Halifax Water Commission) was formed to overhaul the system (History of Halifax Water).
Using funds from industrial and residential bills, as well as from fire hydrant maintenance, the Water Commission would upgrade, clean, and restore public water sources. The city built the J.D. Kline Water Treatment Plant in 1977, which now serves Halifax. When Halifax and Dartmouth amalgamated in 1996, the Water Commission worked to bring reliable, clean water to Dartmouth by tapping into Lake Major, finally finishing the water plant there in 1999. (Water Treatment Plants of Halifax)
The Finishing Lines
Thanks to modern advances in health and safety technology and in the field of medicine, cholera isn’t as scary as it used to be. Vaccines, antibiotics, water and sanitation standards, and even the simple act of boiling water to a sufficient temperature can all reduce or eliminate the risk of contracting cholera. The epidemics of the past helped contribute to our knowledge of public health and safety, and in turn informed responses to modern epidemics and pandemics, such as COVID-19.
Library Sources
Quarantine, What Is Old Is New
Additional Sources
Calomel (Encyclopedia Brittanica)
Cholera (World Health Organization)
Cholera and Its Suggested Remedies in the Mid 1800s, Geri Walton
Cholera Epidemic (Friends of McNabs Island)
Does a mustard plaster work? Healthline
Featured Maps and Plans (Halifax Archives)
From Cholera to Yellow Fever: A Short History of Disease Outbreaks in Halifax
From Empire to Colony: The Halifax Cholera Outbreaks of 1834 and 1866, Acadiensis
The Great Stink – How the Victorians Transformed London to Solve the Problem of Waste
How Bazalgette Built London’s First Super Sewer
John Snow (Encyclopedia Brittanica)
John Snow, Cholera, the Broad Street Pump; Waterborne Diseases Then and Now
Mapping Disease: John Snow and Cholera
Mean Oxidation State of Organic Carbon
Mustard Plasters (Health Line)
New Affordable Cholera Vaccine Receives WHO Prequalification
Passage from Queenstown to New York, 1866
Snow Mask, Wood Library Museum
Water Pump (100 Objects that Shaped Public Health)
Water Treatment Plants of Halifax
Women in Medicine: Mary Seacole, Science Museum
Further Reading
Plague-busters! Medicine’s Battles With History’s Deadliest Diseases – Fitzharris, Lindsey
Evidence! How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera – Hopkinson, Deborah
History Smashers! Plagues and Pandemics – Messner, Kate
Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics – Peters, Marilee
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, From Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond – Shah, Sonia
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them – Wright, Jennifer
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