Henry Whitehead and Cholera in Broad Street

THE cholera epidemic in the St. James's district of Westminster in 1854 was perhaps the most terrible outbreak of that disease which this country has ever known-terrible because of its virulence and local concentration. More than five hundred people who lived or worked within an area only a few hundred yards square died of the disease in ten days. The outbreak is memorable, too, in the annals of epidemiology because of its association with John Snow's historic investigation into the Broad Street pump. Less well known, however, is the important contribution made by the Rev. Henry Whitehead, but it was, in fact, his work which constituted the first independent confirmation of Snow's hypothesis attributing the spread of cholera to contaminated water.