Summary

For two days following the Lewis baby’s outbreak with cholera, things were quiet. Twenty-eight year-old Henry Whitehead, a curate at St. Luke’s church, worked as a missionary to the underclass in Soho. Whitehead would typically visit parishioners in their homes, inmates at the Workhouse and the 150 employees at the Eley Brothers factory. There were dozens of other places and hundreds of other people that were part of his familiar routine.

Forty Broad Street where the sick Lewis baby suffered was on his beat. Hundreds of people would pass that way seeking water from the Broad Street pump. The pump had earned a reputation of being a source of clear, debris-free water. Many Soho residents who lived closer to other pumps, preferred to walk the greater distance to the Broad Street pump because of its promise of...