THE CHOLERA IN GOLDEN-SQUARE
The outbreak of cholera in the vicinity of Golden-square is now subsiding, but the passenger through the streets which compose that district will see many evidences of the alarming severity of the attack. Men and women in mourning are to be found in great numbers; and the chief topic of conversation is the recent epidemic. The shop windows are filled with placards relating to the all engrossing subject; and, if it be true that in a multitude of counsels there is wisdom, the good people of this parish ought to be so wise in the matter of cholera as to be quite beyond the chance of a second attack. At every turn the instructions of the new Board of Health stare you in the face. In shopwindows, on church and chapel doors, on dead walls, and at every available point appear the parochial handbills, directing the poor where to apply for gratuitous relief. The homoeopathists are not behindhand, but energetically assert their capability of putting a stop to the epidemic. An oil-shop puts forth a large cask at its door, labelled in gigantic capitals "Chloride of lime." The most remarkable evidence of all, however, and the most important, consists in the continual presence of lime in the roadways. The puddles are white and milky with it, the stones are smeared with it; great splashes of it lie about in the gutters, and the air is redolent with its strong and not very agreeable odour. You might at first imagine that a vast amount of building was going on, but not so. The fact is that the parish authorities have very wisely determined to wash all the streets in the tainted district with this powerful disinfectant; and, accordingly, the purification takes place regularly every evening. The shopkeepers have dismal stories to tell—how they would hear in the evening that one of their neighbours whom they had been talking with in the morning had expired after a few hours of agony and terror. It has even been asserted that the number of corpses was so great that they were removed wholesale in dead-carts for want of sufficient hearses to convey them; but let us hope this is incorrect.—Globe.
SEPT. 15, 1854