| The unsanitary conditions of the Welsh towns in the 1830s were to prove
an excellent breeding ground for the disease and by May 1832 the first reports
of Welsh Cholera began to appear. By June all major towns were affected to
some degree. The fact that Cholera appeared whilst the country was
obsessed by the political debates of the Reform Act crisis meant that the
spread of the disease did not feature in the minds of prominent politicians.
Unfortunately, the records for the 1830s make it very difficult to get
much information on the early progress of Cholera. It is difficult to
measure the impact but a best guess suggests that perhaps 400 people died
in the Swansea area with more dying in Cardiff.
Merthyr also suffered in the 1832 epidemics but
the surviving records (which are very poor) suggest that the impact of the
disease was limited, probably because Merthyr's real industrial growth and
sanitation and pollution problems came later in the 1830s. By 1849,
Merthyr's overcrowding and lack of sanitation ensured that the Cholera
epidemic of that year would be catastrophic and over 1400 people died in
five months.
The epidemic of 1849 is much better documented.
An isolated case came to Swansea in October 1848 and a small outbreak occurred
in Cardiff in January 1839. However the disease only really took
hold in the summer months of 1849 and wreaked havoc throughout the
coalfield. Local newspapers in Cardiff and Swansea chronicled the
progress of the disease in weekly reports as you can see from the extract
from Swansea's Cambrian above.
[ Cholera in South Wales ] [ What is Cholera? ] [ Why did Cholera spread across industrial South Wales? ] [ Cholera in South Wales - the events ] [ Evidence: A wc from the 1890s. ] [ Evidence: Providing a safe water supply for Swansea. ] [ Why Cholera spread in Wales - housing ] [ Why Cholera spread in Wales - attitudes to water supply ] [ Why Cholera spread in Wales - attitudes to rubbish and sewage ] [ Cholera in Wales - consequences ]
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