The Broad Street pump, Soho

Assembled from 9 blocks · 1 evidence · 2 related

1. Story
2. The public water pump on Broad Street in Soho, London — the street is now Broadwick Street — at the centre of the cholera outbreak of late August and September 1854, in which several hundred people in a few surrounding streets died within days. Snow persuaded the parish authorities to remove the pump handle on 8 September 1854; the outbreak was already declining by then, so the removal did not end it, and the pump's significance is evidential rather than therapeutic. A replica pump and a plaque now mark the site. The case is taught as the origin of field epidemiology, and it is worth teaching alongside its own limitation: a single compelling map persuaded almost nobody at the time, and the sanitary reform that followed was driven by statistics and stench rather than by Snow's inference.
3. Knowledge
4. The Broad Street pump, Soho
5. Connections
6. John Snow
7. The Broad Street pump handle is removed
8. Evidence
9. Supports the waterborne-transmission argument, the Broad Street investigation and the South London water-supply comparison. V55 verification basis: not consulted in this session; the 8 September 1854 handle-removal date comes from the standard secondary account rather than from the monograph.