After that day, into the next week, though we kept asking questions of families who had lost someone, it seemed we were coming across fewer new cases of cholera. I mentioned it to Dr. Snow.
“That could very well be, Eel.”
“Does that mean … taking the pump handle off is working already?”
“Well, probably the epidemic would have been winding down by now anyway, unless there had been a new source of contamination in the water,” Dr. Snow explained. “But the pump handle may have saved some lives.”
He sighed. “It would have saved more if we could have done it even earlier.”
There was still a lot we didn’t know. Like how the water got contaminated with the cholera poison in the first place.
“We may never know,” said Dr. Snow one evening in his study. “And we may never find the index case either.”
“The index case?” asked Rev. Whitehead.
Yes, the reverend was there. For that was something else that had changed.
Rev. Whitehead and Dr. Snow had begun to work together. Both had been asked to be part of the St. James Cholera Inquiry Committee, which was formally investigating the epidemic. And as Rev. Whitehead had talked to the families and listened more closely to Dr. Snow’s ideas, he began to change his mind about the doctor’s theory. Soon he was one of Dr. Snow’s strongest advocates.
“The index case is the first case,” Dr. Snow was saying.
“But wasn’t that Mr. Griggs?” I asked from where I sat by the fire, with Dilly at my feet. The nights were cooler now, and Mrs. Weatherburn was letting me sleep on a cot in a corner of the kitchen. “At least until your future is settled,” she had said.
Dr. Snow shook his head. “It might seem that Mr. Griggs was the index case, because he was the first person we know of who got sick and died. But we have to look further to find a case that explains how the water in the Broad Street well got poisoned with cholera. Other people died during those first three days—seventy-nine on Friday and Saturday alone. They likely contracted the disease at about the same time as Mr. Griggs did. And they became sick because somehow the poison that causes cholera seeped into the well.”
“So someone else got sick first and somehow the water became contaminated,” Rev. Whitehead said thoughtfully. “But we just haven’t found out who it was—or how that happened.”
Annie’s father, Constable Thomas Lewis, was the last victim of the epidemic. He died on Tuesday, September 19.
I went to see Mrs. Lewis soon after, to pay my respects and bring some fresh eggs and embroidery thread that I’d got from Mrs. Weatherburn for Annie Ribbons. I also wanted to invite Annie to come with Florrie and me to see Dr. Snow’s menagerie again.
“You do like animals, don’t you? Weren’t you carrying some kind of creature squirming in your bag when I saw you at the pump a while back?” Mrs. Lewis asked. “I was so frantic that morning I didn’t ask you about it properly.”
“It was a cat. She still lives at the Lion.” I grinned. “The foreman, Mr. Cooper, is quite attached to her now.”
I thought back to the morning I found Little Queenie, when Gus had waited his turn so that he could load up a jug to bring to Mrs. Susannah Eley in Hampstead.
“Mrs. Lewis,” I asked suddenly, “Fanny was sick that day, wasn’t she? I remember you telling me that.”
“Yes, poor little dear,” she replied with a sigh. “She lasted until that Saturday. Dr. Rogers said she had just gotten so weak from diarrhea her little body couldn’t recover.”
“But Dr. Rogers didn’t think she had the cholera?” I asked, my mind racing with possibilities.
“No, he didn’t think so. After all, Fanny was sick that last Monday morning of August,” said Mrs. Lewis. “She was sick before anyone else, before the Great Trouble began.”
Before anyone else. Fanny had been sick three days before Mr. Griggs became ill. What if Dr. Rogers had been wrong?
I ran to find Florrie, and together we tracked down Rev. Whitehead.
That night, all of us gathered in Dr. Snow’s study. Dr. Snow and Rev. Whitehead listened to me for a long time.
A few days later, the St. James Cholera Inquiry Committee gathered in the cellar of 40 Broad Street to interview Mrs. Lewis. She told them that she had soaked Fanny’s diapers in buckets all during the week of the baby’s illness. Then she had dumped the soiled water out into the cesspool.
The committee brought in Mr. York, a surveyor, to excavate the cesspool and the waste pipe that connected it to the sewer. Mr. York found that the walls of the cesspool were lined with bricks—decaying bricks. He discovered that between the cesspool and the Broad Street well, there was a lot of swampy soil, full of human waste. He also found that the well was only two feet and eight inches from the cesspool.
And so, what had happened was this:
The Broad Street well had been contaminated by water and sewage seeping into its walls from the cellar of 40 Broad Street, where Mrs. Lewis had been soaking Fanny’s diapers.
The death certificate for Fanny Lewis said that she died of exhaustion after an attack of diarrhea. But that wasn’t the full story.
“Fanny Lewis was the first case, what we call the index case,” said Dr. Snow. “We will never know how she got it. But now we know that the cholera poison in her diapers seeped into the well, contaminating the water from the Broad Street pump.”
Fanny had died of cholera. Cholera that had then killed 615 other people.
“Dr. Snow, Fanny died on Saturday, a week before they took the pump handle off,” I said, trying to work out the puzzle. “Is her death why the epidemic started to slow down the second week?”
“Yes, most likely. We’re not sure how long the cholera poison stays active, but Mrs. Lewis was no longer washing out Fanny’s diapers in the cesspool after Saturday, September second,” Dr. Snow explained. “So the outbreak was probably nearing its end by September eighth, when the pump handle came off. Fewer new cases were occurring because the cholera poison was gone from the water, although, of course, people might still have been drinking contaminated water from the well that they had stored in their homes.”
Florrie spoke up. “But what about Fanny’s father? Didn’t he get sick too?”
Dr. Snow nodded. “Constable Lewis was struck with cholera very late in the epidemic, on the afternoon of September eighth, the very day the pump handle was removed.”
I tried to piece out what that meant. “So, if Mrs. Lewis emptied buckets of her husband’s waste into her cesspool in the cellar, just as she had done with Fanny’s diapers, contamination would have kept on seeping into the well.”
“Exactly,” agreed Rev. Whitehead. “But because you and Dr. Snow were able to convince the committee to act, no one could get water from the Broad Street pump after Constable Lewis got sick.”
“He fought for his life for eleven days,” reflected Dr. Snow.
“Eleven days during which the epidemic would have kept on raging if it hadn’t been for you, Dr. Snow,” put in Mrs. Weatherburn as she refilled his teacup.
The doctor smiled and raised his cup to me. “And you, Eel. If you hadn’t tracked down Mrs. Eley, I’m not sure the committee would have made the decision they did.”
Nothing would bring Bernie and the others back. But we had made a difference. Removing the handle of the Broad Street pump had saved lives.