We often take for granted the cleanliness of our own neighborhoods. In fact, we may even consider some areas within them dirty or unkempt, when in reality they are not as bad as they are made out to be. Consider, for a moment, your typical Thursday. Most of us wake up in our own beds, get ready in our personal living spaces, and then are off to school. Along the way, we may grimace at the individual on the bus who (to put it nicely) doesn’t smell so nice. Right about now you are wondering to yourself “I can’t wait to get off of the bus,” but an hour later you are forced to inhale the stench of the person seated right next to you in your English class. Finally, you endure what seems to be a long bus ride home standing next to another interesting smell, but soon enough you arrive home and it smells exactly the way you want it to. Let’s face it – unpleasant aromas are going to follow us wherever we go in some way, but for the most part they are avoidable. That is what separates us from the Londoners in the 1850’s plagued with cholera.

These individuals lived in complete filth, among an intolerable stench that would not go away. People were living on top of each other in spaces meant for much smaller numbers. There were cesspools of waste just sitting there, collecting even more waste. Farm animals literally ran rampant in the streets, while dozens of domestic animals were shoved into the same living spaces as their human owners. Oh, and if they thought it was bad enough that they couldn’t breathe fresh air, let’s add the fact that they couldn’t drink clean water either and not only was it contaminated, it was deadly. Those who contracted cholera were dead within days. Though we don’t know exactly how they felt at this time, we use our imaginations (as Johnson explained on page 32) to recreate the cholera stricken city and what the experience would have been like for them. As I continued to read, I kept picturing myself holding my breath on the bus, and how that was the worst thing in the world for me at 9:30 on a Thursday morning. To say that there is much worse would be an understatement. With that being said, I pose this question: Just how foul do you think it was? How do you think the Londoners felt, and why would they have stayed?

-Amanda Strano