Some of the effects were short term and quickly forgotten when the ravages of the epidemics had passed.  For example, attitudes to drainage and water supplies changed very gradually in the later nineteenth century and some historians believe that sanitary reform would have come about regardless of whether Cholera had arrived or not. Other people remain convinced that the Cholera epidemics of the 1850s finally made people realise how dirty their streets and towns were, and that something had to be done about them.

There was however a longer term effect on many communities. Cholera often took the breadwinner in working class families and left many widows and orphans. These most vulnerable and helpless people often ended up in the poor law system which often changed the whole direction of their lives. Cholera also established itself in the collective memory as a disease to be feared. That fear changed people's attitudes to religion, health and even immigration. A considerable amount of anti-Irish feeling was present throughout South Wales in the 1840s as it was wrongly believed that people fleeing the dreadful Irish Famine brought the disease with them. Such attitudes endured for a long time in many minds. 

Cholera came to Wales at roughly the time when written records and documentary sources started to be created in far greater amounts. So we often see the first detailed information about communities because public health records were being kept on the spread of the disease and its effect on the local economy and society. Cholera was one of the first 'media' events, its progress was recorded in the newspapers and fear of the disease ensured it was the topic of conversation at all levels of society. 

Thus Cholera can be a useful way to look at a local community because it almost always appears at a time of great change and how it was handled can tell you a great deal about our early industrial communities.