The Broad Street pump handle is removed
After mapping deaths in the Soho cholera outbreak against the pumps that served the households, John Snow persuades the Board of Guardians of St James parish to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump. The outbreak was already in decline, so the action did not end it; its importance is as the first use of spatial epidemiology to identify a source.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The Broad Street pump, Soho · site · United Kingdom
- John Snow · person · United Kingdom · not located
- Sanitation and water treatment · technology system · Britain and North America first; now global · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, second edition
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.
John Churchill, London · 1855 · Partly verified
Snow J., On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, 2nd ed., London, 1855
Recorded on The Broad Street pump, Soho
- The Broad Street pump handle is removed
- Routine chlorination of a municipal water supply begins in the United States
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.