1832 Cholera pandemic

Fifty years ago I wrote a story. In brief... In the sultry hot year 1934 a young boy died from scarlet fever, foul play suspected, poisoned by his father. Found guilty, ready to hang. 1935 another hot year, his sister found poisoned, same symptoms, father released. A few dates and locations altered. Until 1936 two joined houses, water was used for drinking from a well by one house, a small hand pump on the side wall, the other house the pump in a shed to protect it from frost. Two years had gone by since the council had hooked up water and sewage to the houses, the old system not mentioned, the pump on the wall sealed and discarded, the pump in the shed, hidden and forgotten. The boy had drunk from the hand pump in the shed, and so had the girl. Also an old Victorian sewage farm nearby had long been forgotten, seeped into the well. Fact. The boy (me) did go to hospital, both pumps were used, and the Victorian sewage farm was in Radford. And for the record there was one in Cow Lane, and a water works in Spon End in Victorian times. Mods, do as you wish.

I've written before that Coventry (and most old places) was built on cess pits. I'm sure that I read somewhere that the cellars in west Broadgate smelt whiffy because they were built on such, even hundreds of years after the dung was fresh. Kaga, you must have had more lives than a cat, the close calls you had.

Florence Nightingale's greatest innovation was cleanliness. That could well explain her avoiding cholera. Of course people were a lot tougher then, I don't think many people of today would last long at all, we've all been weakened by antibacterial cleansers. Boasts on the bottle that it kills 99% of all bacteria, there's an awful lot of bacteria essential for life.