In our eyes today, it is evident that something like the cholera epidemic would occur in a city like the Victorian London, but back then, it seemed as if London thought its city would be invincible to the effects of its own unsanitary ways. As Steven Johnson stated, “…it was drowning in its own filth.” (13) I found it intriguing to see how there were so many different types of scavengers living in London’s underworld such as the bone-pickers, rag-gatherers, pure-finders, mud-larks, night-soil men, toshers and more that contributed to the city’s management of waste. However, that type of waste recycling wasn’t enough to keep the city in control as it became “a matter of simple demography: the number of people generating waste had almost tripled in the space of fifty years.” (12) Therefore, the city’s natural resources like water became increasingly susceptible to contamination. Cholera dwindled the city’s original population like no before and it made everyone wonder what was the cause behind this. Dr. John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead collaborated to find the culprit of this deadly disease. The miasma theory was greatly believed in during 19th century London so in my opinion, that hindered the progress of discovery that unclean water running through the extremely filthy city caused all of these deaths.

I want to ask, why do you think there was such a lack of public health awareness during this period? Did the people take the pungent smell that traveled all about London as non-detrimental and that it did not bring another motivation to make changes in sanitation?