Hidden extras: cholera comes to Victorian London Silver snuff
boxes, United Kingdom, presented in 1832 and 1850 Faeces with
your fish, madam? Excrement with your ice cream, sir? While
these were not menu options you would expect to be offered in
Victorian London, there was a reasonable chance you might have
got them anyway. London was the largest city in the world in the
1800s, a city overwhelmed by the waste products of its ever-
growing population. Overcrowded into decaying, stinking slums,
the poorest citizens were literally surrounded by their own
filth. Piled up in courtyards or overflowing from basement
cesspits, into which toilets were drained, raw sewage was
everywhere, and so was its stench. The spread of cholera In such
conditions disease was inevitable, but Victorian London’s
experience of cholera in 1832 would have a huge social impact.
Spread via the bacteria-laced diarrhoea of its victims,
cholera’s violent and rapid assault on the human body was
terrifying. Although it killed fewer than other co