“Eleven days during which the epidemic would have kept on raging if it hadn’t been for you, Dr. Snow,” put in Mrs. Weatherburn as she refilled his teacup.
The doctor smiled and raised his cup to me. “And you, Eel. If you hadn’t tracked down Mrs. Eley, I’m not sure the committee would have made the decision they did.”
Nothing would bring Bernie and the others back. But we had made a difference. Removing the handle of the Broad Street pump had saved lives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Henry and Me
There is only one more part of my story to tell.
One evening at Dr. Snow’s house, I was surprised to find Dr. Farr from the General Register Office, where I had written out the list of deaths, and also Mr. Edward Huggins and a kind-looking woman he introduced as his wife.
It was quite a crowd for Dr. Snow, who didn’t usually entertain. Especially since Rev. Whitehead was there as well. And so was Henry.
I had Mrs. Weatherburn to thank for Henry. As soon as she’d heard my whole story, she’d gotten a cab and the two of us had gone to fetch him from Mrs. Miggle. Then she had bought us clothes and sent us to school.
“And if that evil man you call Fisheye comes after you again, he shall find himself transported to Australia,” she threatened. “After all, Dr. Snow has connections with the queen.”
Still, I knew Dr. Snow couldn’t take care of us. His work came first, and he was rarely home. We didn’t know what might happen next. Until this night.
Dr. Farr spoke first. “Dr. Snow invited me here so I could help illuminate your past.”
Henry leaned in close to me and said in a loud whisper, “What’s he talking about? What’s illuminate?”
Dr. Snow smiled. “Don’t worry, Henry. All Dr. Farr means is that he is able to tell you something about your family.”
Dr. Farr addressed me. “Young man, perhaps if you had not adopted that odd nickname of yours, I might have realized this sooner. But seeing your extraordinary eyes that day got me thinking.
“And since I work in an office that keeps records, I did some research. It was just as I thought. Now brace yourselves, lads,” he told Henry and me. “I am here to tell you that your father worked for me when you were little. He had your eyes, Eel, the very same.”
“You mean, sir, that our father helped to keep records?” I asked.
I remembered that day when I’d sat with the clerks in Somerset House, copying down that list for Dr. Snow. Keeping records of those who had died might seem a trivial thing. But from all Dr. Snow had taught me, I knew such information could change things—it could save lives.
“After your father died, I lost track of you both,” Dr. Farr was saying. “I’d heard your mother had fallen into distress and had remarried, badly. But when she passed away, all trace of you boys was lost.”
Henry’s mouth was open, and I realized mine was too. I wondered where Dr. Farr’s story was headed.
“I thought I recognized you that day, but I couldn’t be sure,” Dr. Farr told me. “Your father had brought you in when you were quite small; I’m sure you wouldn’t remember. You should know that he always spoke of both his sons with pride.”
My father had worked in the General Register Office! He had helped keep the data that Dr. Snow depended on.
“So a mystery of your past is revealed,” said Dr. Snow.
There was more.
“Now for your future,” said Dr. Snow. He nodded at Mr. Edward Huggins, who spoke next.
“As I thought, Eel, I can’t get you your situation back. But I can offer you something else. My wife and I lost our only baby to flu a few years ago.” He reached out and took her hand.
“Eel and Henry, if you’re willing, we’d like you to come live with us,” Mr. Edward offered. “We promise to send you to school. Eel, you could even follow in Dr. Snow’s footsteps and be a physician someday if you wanted.”
If I became a doctor, I could do experiments and change things, just as Dr. Snow was doing with his theory. And I might earn enough so that maybe, someday, I could offer Florrie a chance to do art. I could imagine her drawing maps and charts and medical illustrations—all to help make people’s lives healthier and better. Florrie would like that.
Around me, the adults applauded. Henry smiled shyly, burying his head in my side. I had only one question.
“Yes,” said Mr. Edward. “Dilly is welcome too.”
EPILOGUE
1855
Wednesday, September 26
At the invitation of Dr. Snow and Rev. Whitehead, Florrie, Henry, and I went to a committee meeting at St. James’ Church.
The pump on Broad Street had been without its handle for more than a year, and the neighborhood had petitioned that it be put back. The well had been repaired so waste couldn’t seep underground, and cholera had not appeared again in the neighborhood. So it was no surprise that the vote came out in favor of opening the pump again.
Afterward, we said warm goodbyes to Dr. Snow and Rev. Whitehead, who were off to drink tea and compare notes on the papers they had written about the spread of cholera. Florrie’s employer, a reform-minded lady named Mrs. Mary Tealby, had been so impressed with Florrie’s role in making Dr. Snow’s map, she had given Florrie special permission to come. (It helped that Dr. Snow himself had paid the good lady a visit and asked for Florrie’s help in illustrating the final version of his map.)
Florrie, Henry, and I began walking, catching up on our lives and reflecting on all that had changed in the past year. I led the way, and somehow found myself heading toward Blackfriars Bridge.
“We can’t get home too late,” said Henry, who loved living with Mr. Edward and his wife just as much as I did. For me it was being able to breathe again—a chance to use my mind for more than just scavenging.
On the bridge, I leaned over to look at the dark sweep of the Thames below us. I thought of my mudlarking days, trudging through the slimy mud, covered in filth from head to toe.
“Have you seen Thumbless Jake recently?” Florrie asked softly.
“No,” I said, putting my hand on Dilly’s head to keep her close. “Not for a long time.”
But the words Jake had spoken that morning the Great Trouble began came back to me: “Ain’t we all riverfinders? Put on this earth to try to get by, one day at a time. We’re all we’ve got under this sky. We need to play fair and take care of one another.”
We had done that as best we could: Dr. Snow, Rev. Whitehead, Florrie, and me.
Thumbless Jake. I wondered what would happen to him. It would be nice to think he could find his way back to Hazel and his children, though somehow I didn’t think so. He’d had such trouble in his life.
But then again, so had all of us that summer when the Great Trouble had come to Broad Street.
And somehow, we had survived.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A Reader’s Guide to THE GREAT TROUBLE
Many readers ask where I get my ideas. My inspiration often comes from what I read, and that’s certainly true for The Great Trouble. Several years ago I came upon a book by Steven Johnson called The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.
Replica of the Broad Street pump outside the John Snow, a pub on what is now Broadwick Street, London
Photograph by Deborah Hopkinson
The Ghost Map tells the true story of Dr. John Snow and the Broad Street cholera epidemic of 1854. While The Great Trouble is historical fiction, the story mirrors the progress of the epidemic during those late-summer days so long ago, when 616 residents died. Some of the action is compressed into fewer days (see the timeline for a summary of actual events), and I’ve given my fictional characters Eel and Florrie major roles in solving the mystery.
The real Dr. Snow created the now-famous map that revealed that deaths from cholera, sometimes called the blue death, were clustered around the Broad Street pump. By interviewing residents (including th
e sons of Susannah Eley, who died in her home several miles away after drinking the water), Dr. Snow was able to demonstrate a link between drinking from the Broad Street well and getting the disease.
Thanks to Dr. Snow’s testimony at the committee meeting on September 7, the pump handle was removed on September 8. In his book, Steven Johnson calls that day “a turning point”—an important moment in the history of public health, when action was taken to protect citizens based on scientific theory.
The investigations didn’t stop then. Later that fall, Dr. Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead were asked to join the St. James Cholera Inquiry Committee to continue to study the epidemic. Rev. Whitehead, who had no medical training, disagreed with Dr. Snow’s theory at first. But as he talked to families, he became convinced that Dr. Snow was right.
It was also Henry Whitehead who discovered that baby Frances (Fanny) Lewis was the index case that started the epidemic. This led to an excavation of the cesspool at 40 Broad Street in the spring of 1855. In his report of May 1, the surveyor, Jehoshaphat York, noted that the bricks lining the cesspool were decayed. The Broad Street well was less than three feet away, and the surrounding soil was saturated with human waste. In other words, when Sarah Lewis emptied her baby’s diapers into the cesspool, the cholera bacteria seeped through bricks and soil to contaminate the water in the well.
As in our story, after little Frances Lewis died on Saturday, September 2, the epidemic naturally waned because no new contamination of the well was taking place. But her father, Constable Thomas Lewis, fell ill on Friday, September 8, the very day the pump handle was removed. Had the well not been closed, the epidemic would undoubtedly have killed more people because Mrs. Lewis had begun emptying her husband’s waste into the cesspool. When no new epidemics struck the neighborhood, the pump handle was eventually restored in September 1855.
Dr. John Snow is known today as a pioneer both in public health and in the field of anesthesiology. But until I read The Ghost Map, I hadn’t heard of him. My journey to find out more took me to books, websites, museums, and libraries, including the Wellcome Library in London, which specializes in the history of medicine.
Finally, I found myself standing on Broadwick Street, which used to be called Broad Street. There’s a replica of the pump there, and a pink slab of granite nearby marks where it once stood. In 2011, as it must have been in 1854, the street was the center of a bustling neighborhood. I couldn’t help reaching down to touch the stone as I imagined what it had been like to live then. And that is how this book came to be.
ABOUT THE CHARACTERS
The Great Trouble includes both fictional characters and historical figures. Eel, Henry, Florrie, Fisheye Bill Tyler, the Griggs family, Abel Cooper, Nasty Ned, and Thumbless Jake are fictional. Historical figures include Dr. John Snow, Rev. Henry Whitehead, William Farr, and Dr. Snow’s housekeeper, Jane Weatherburn.
I have also used the names of some actual Soho residents. The brothers John and Edward Huggins really were the owners of the Lion Brewery, though I have no reason to think they were not both perfectly nice gentlemen. Their nephew Hugzie is fictional.
People who lived at 40 Broad Street included a tailor, “Mr. G.,” who became the fictional Mr. Griggs. Constable Thomas Lewis and his wife, Sarah, also lived at that address, along with a son, an infant daughter named Frances, and a daughter named Annie, who in a later census was listed as an embroiderer. (Thus she became Annie Ribbons in my book.) Susannah Eley, who lived in Hampstead, was the widow of a munitions factory owner. Knowing of her fondness for water from the Broad Street well, her sons had a bottle delivered to her daily.
Additional information about major historical figures in the story is included in the following sections.
Dr. John Snow (1813–1858)
John Snow was born in York, the eldest of nine children. His father, William, began as an unskilled laborer and was eventually able to purchase a farm. John’s parents wanted to give their children a primary education, so John went to school until the age of fourteen.
In 1827, he was apprenticed to William Hardcastle, a family friend who was a surgeon apothecary in Newcastle upon Tyne, a coal-mining town. It was there, in 1831, that John first became acquainted with cholera. He moved to London to continue his medical training in 1836 and set up his practice in the city two years later.
In 1846, the London dentist James Robinson became the first doctor in England to demonstrate ether. Gases like ether and chloroform were important because they allowed people to undergo surgical and dental procedures without pain. John Snow began doing his own research on anesthesia and often experimented on guinea pigs, mice, frogs, and other animal subjects. He also designed an inhaler and began assisting dentists and surgeons. He became so well known for his skill that he gave chloroform to Queen Victoria when she gave birth to Prince Leopold in 1853.
At the same time, Dr. Snow was researching cholera. By 1854, when the Broad Street epidemic occurred, he was studying the relationship between cholera outbreaks and London’s water supply.
Even after the success of the Broad Street investigation in 1854, not everyone in the field of public health agreed with Dr. Snow’s theory on cholera. It was not until 1866, partly thanks to Henry Whitehead, that Dr. Snow’s conviction that cholera was a waterborne disease was fully accepted. Unfortunately, John Snow was not there to see that development. He suffered what was apparently a stroke and died on June 16, 1858. He was only forty-five. Today he is remembered for his pioneering research in anesthesia and epidemiology.
Rev. Henry Whitehead (1825–1896)
Henry Whitehead is an unlikely hero in the history of cholera. He had no medical or public health training. He was born in Ramsgate, where his father was the headmaster of a school. Whitehead attended the University of Oxford, receiving his degree in 1850. His first assignment in London was as assistant curate at St. Luke’s Church on Berwick Street. Just shy of thirty when the cholera epidemic broke out, he was a familiar and comforting figure to the families of the neighborhood.
Rev. Whitehead remained unconvinced by Dr. John Snow’s theory until the two of them were thrown together on the St. James Cholera Inquiry Committee. In January 1855, after reading the monograph about the Broad Street epidemic that Dr. Snow had prepared and gathering information from the residents, Rev. Whitehead came to believe that Dr. Snow was right.
In 1865 and 1866, when cholera again broke out, Rev. Whitehead published articles reminding the public of Dr. Snow’s earlier work. In 1874, when he left London for a position in Brampton, a farewell dinner was held in his honor. During his speech, he called his old friend “as great a benefactor in my opinion to the human race as has appeared in the present century.”
Dr. William Farr (1807–1883)
William Farr was born into a large family in the village of Shropshire. It was his good fortune to attract the attention of a local benefactor, Joseph Pryce, who paid for his education. When Pryce died in 1828, he left William money, which the young man used to pursue medical training. William became interested in medical statistics, urging that physicians record the exact reason for a person’s death. In 1838, he joined the General Register Office for England and Wales, where he was responsible for the collection of medical statistics. He stayed with the office until his retirement in 1880.
Dr. Farr came late to believing that contaminated water, not miasma, caused the spread of cholera. It was not until the cholera epidemic of 1866, eight years after Dr. John Snow’s death, that he fully supported Dr. Snow’s theory. Today Dr. Farr is remembered for developing a national vital statistics system, which provided data to public health officials and served as an example to other countries.
THE SETTING
The Great Trouble takes place in Victorian London. Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain from 1837 until her death in 1901; to date, hers is the longest reign of any British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history. This period has become known as the Victorian era.
; In the summer of 1854, when our story opens, London was a rapidly growing city of two million. Scavengers were the recyclers of Eel’s London: night-soil men emptied cesspools; mudlarks and other riverfinders recycled wood, coal, and other things from the Thames. There were ragpickers and bone collectors. Pure-finders collected dog waste and sold it to tanners, who used it in making leather goods.
But the scavengers could not keep up. London was a city without a sewer system capable of dealing with its animal and human waste. Much of it ended up in the Thames, especially as indoor toilets, which led to the river, became more prevalent.
London would have to wait until the Great Stink of 1858, a summer when the stench became so bad that laws were finally passed to authorize the construction of a modern sewer system. It took sixteen years and 318 million bricks to build eighty-three miles of sewers, guided by the vision of the chief metropolitan engineer, Joseph Bazalgette. But that is another story!
CHOLERA—YESTERDAY AND TODAY
Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Although Robert Koch is usually credited with being the first to see the bacillus under a microscope in 1883, an Italian researcher named Filippo Pacini identified it in 1854, the same year as the Broad Street epidemic. In 1965, the name Vibrio cholerae Pacini 1854 was adopted in honor of Pacini’s earlier, largely forgotten discovery.
As Dr. Snow theorized, cholera is spread primarily through contaminated water. According to the website of International Medical Corps:
Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by an infection in the intestines that can kill even a healthy adult in a matter of hours. Symptoms, including severe watery diarrhea, can surface in as little as two hours or up to five days after infection, and can then trigger extreme dehydration and kidney failure. With such a short incubation period, cholera can easily explode into an outbreak.… Cholera is caused by ingestion of the bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. The infection is spread through contaminated fecal matter, which can be consumed through tainted food and water sources or because of poor sanitation and hygiene, like unwashed hands. (International Medical Corps. “Basic Facts on Cholera.” http://internationalmedicalcorps.org/page.aspx?pid=475)
The Great Trouble Page 15