65. Living in Greenock, 1842

The first of the major cholera epidemics, which struck Scotland in 1832, claimed 10,000 victims. A series of reports on the sanitary conditions in towns were issued; the most important of these, the Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain written by Edwin Chadwick in 1842, concluded that disease was related to living conditions and that public health reform was urgently needed. The report for Greenock, written by a local doctor, provided descriptions of ..