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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Where the wealthy go in epidemics, then and now
Research shows that as the pandemic hit, those fleeing New York and London were white, educated and rich — we are certainly not all in it together, says KEITH FLETT

CHOLERA was the big and recurring disease of the 19th century. There was no full understanding of its cause and why it was spread until the 1880s.

Britain, along with the rest of Europe, saw several significant epidemics in 1831-2 and in 1848-9, in both cases also periods of revolutionary political changes.

The disease was held to be one of the lower classes, as indeed it mainly was, because of the insanitary housing conditions they had little choice but to live in.

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