Cholera Riots and Conspiracy theories

​During the current Coronavirus crises, we are awash with information from all angles; from newspapers, to social media, to broadcast media, to hashtags. We are bombarded with the educated opinions of experts in the field of disease and epidemiology, who often - alarmingly to the layman – offer legitimately different opinions, giving rise to doubts. Fear, and of course fake news, leading to anxiety and irrationality, drowning out the voices of reason. But, happily we have avoided the widespread riots and violence which characterised the 1832 Cholera epidemic. 

A court for King Cholera. Credit: Wellcome Collection

​Public disorder was not a feature of the recurrent outbreaks of ‘fever’ before 1832, although individuals were frequently targeted.  However, the pan-European spread of Asiatic Cholera between 1830-37, ignited ‘waves of social violence’ against the rich, government officials, hospital workers, and especially doctors.  The nature of this violence during the 1832 pandemic was essentially a class struggle – the poor were popularly perceived to be the reservoir of disease, and somehow complicit in outbreaks. Doctors, for their part, expressed great frustration, particularly with the poorer classes, for failing to accept modern scientific approaches to cleanliness and medicine, and the new science-based values of the period. 
 
Mistrust in the medical profession stemmed from an unfounded belief that doctors stood to ‘profit enormously’ from the fees paid to them for their services. In Sligo, a west of Ireland provincial town, public rumours speculated that doctors would be paid 10 guineas a day by the Board of Health for dealing with cases, and a further five pounds for every patient they killed. The horrific physical appearance of cholera victims, with their blue and shrivelled skin, readily gave rise to the myth that doctors were poisoning their patients, or drugging them asleep, so they could be buried alive, quickly vacating beds for new patients. The forcible removal of those with cholera symptoms, from their homes to hospitals, caused deep resentment and despair, despite its good intentions. 

Visiting Cholera patients. Wellcome Collection

Cholera riots were generally incited by reports that the elites and physicians, were deliberately spreading or inventing the disease to murder the poor. Many believed that the bodies of those who had died would be given over for medical dissection, then seen as a shameful and disrespectful end.  Body-snatching was a real fear, and the poor felt that death in a cholera hospital would lead to the dissecting table.  The banning of normal funerary and burial practices was grievous to a deeply-traditional populace.
  
​In Britain there were over 72 cholera riots recorded in 1831-32. In Ireland, the situation was compounded by the abject poverty of the great mass of people, and by the political situation of the time. Twenty-two riots are recorded throughout Ireland, including three in Sligo, two in Boyle, and outrages in towns as diverse as Derry, Drogheda, Claremorris and Kilkenny.  There is little evidence to link the severity of the outbreak with actual riots – violence flared often based solely on rumour or superstition. In Ballyshannon a mob caused considerable damage to the hospital, despite the local physician working relentlessly for the poor. Interestingly, many of these mobs prominently featured women and children.

Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland c. 1837.

One notable riot involved a future president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Thomas Rumley, (1792-1856).  Rumley and another doctor, probably William Stoker, were requested to investigate a supposed case of Cholera in Kingstown, (Dun Laoghaire), in early 1832. Asiatic Cholera was diagnosed, but furious inhabitants rioted,  - mostly boarding -house keepers of this summer resort -  not wanting their town to be so blackened, and an ‘infuriated mob’ attacked the two doctors with stones and bricks; they narrowly escaped with their lives. The small towns of Ireland were more likely to experience panic and rioting that the bigger urban centres, possibly due to poorer understanding of the disease, and the easier nature of fleeing the infected areas. Rural disorder was rife by 1832, aided by the Tithe Wars. 
 
The arrival of the cholera in Sligo in August 1832 was vehemently denied, and there was ‘violent resistance’ to the Board of Health plan to fit up temporary hospitals in the town, especially one near the most densely populated part of the town.  A letter of protest signed by the residents was sent to the Provost and threats made that the place would be demolished immediately the first patient was admitted.  That idea was abandoned, and instead the Fever Hospital was converted to the treatment of Cholera patients.  This too was met by opposition from those living nearby.  A ‘ruffianly mob’ armed with clubs came in from the countryside, joined up with the poorer classes of the town and declared they ‘would have no Board of Health or Cholera Hospitals’.  Similar demonstrations were organised in other country towns, significantly obstructing the exertions of those taking every precaution to prepare for the impending outbreak.  There was widespread resistance to the creation of what were seen as ‘centres of pestilence’, likely to endanger the local inhabitants. 

Paris uprising 1832

As the epidemic progressed, and many medical men were seen to die in the line of duty, incidences of riots ceased, but the powerlessness and disarray of doctors in the face of such a tide of deaths, left a sense of pessimism amongst rich and poor alike.    
Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Les Misérables, which spawned the modern blockbuster musical, is set during the Paris Uprising of 1832, an insurrection caused in part by the outbreak of Cholera in Paris during the spring of that year, which left 18,400 of the poor dead in its wake.