Knox Box of Miscellany

Dawn Knox – A rearranger of words into something hopefully meaningful…

A Touch of Cholera

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A Touch of Cholera

Continuing with my Regency walking tour around North Soho, based on the book ‘Walks Through Regency London’ by Louise Allen, I resume where I left off, in Poland Street, which is a turning off Oxford Street.

My next stop was at a house where Percy Bysshe Shelley lived in 1811.

Further along the street was no 54, the house of singer, Elizabeth Billington, who was also apparently known as the ‘Poland Street Mantrap’! Perhaps because she was the mistress of the Duke of Rutland, the Prince of Wales, his brother the Duke of Sussex, the theatre manager, Richard Daly amongst others! A busy lady! But she was also very popular with audiences for her singing and she was in demand by both the managers of Drury Lane and Covent Garden who begged her to appear at their respective theatres. They eventually agreed that she would sing at each venue alternately for a salary of 3,000 guineas.

Near Mrs Billington’s house was the 19th Century Star and Garter pub but unfortunately, it was covered in scaffolding and there was a rather large van parked in front of it. Consequently, the photo I took showed very little of the pub. I carried on to the end of Poland Street and turned left into Broadwick Street as instructed.

I then spent some time wandering about looking for a pump. Thank goodness for smart phones and the Internet as I looked up the pump and discovered it had been moved. I should have turned right into Broadwick Street. Once I retraced my steps, the pump was really obvious and in a very appropriate position because it was outside the John Snow pub.

The John Snow pub with pump outside.

This is appropriate because although slightly later than the Regency period, Dr John Snow (1813-1858) is remembered for being the first to link an outbreak of Cholera in August 1854 in Soho to the water from the pump. Dr Snow was an anaesthetist who lived near Broad Street (as Broadwick Street was once known) and having once studied Cholera in an epidemic in South London, he’d developed a theory that it was caused by polluted water. He recognised that Cholera cases were clustered around the water pump and succeeded in demonstrating it was the cause of the epidemic. Initially, his theory was met with disbelief but he finally convinced the parish council to remove the pump handle in September 1854, thus preventing the pump’s use and stopping the spread of the disease.

After that, I carried on the tour and found myself somewhere I associate more with the swinging sixties than the 18th Century… next time…

If you’d like to read more about Cholera, Amanda J Thomas has written a book about it and you can find it here on Amazon

If you want to read part 1 of my Regency walking tour, you can see it here and part 2 is here

All the photos of my day are here on Flickr

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