Your Favourite History Spot: The Broad Street Pump

The Broad Street Pump – today a redundant, seemingly unremarkable water pump located in the backstreets of Carnaby, London. Yet in 1854 it was the epicentre of a deadly catastrophe, unleashing a bacterium that swept through the streets of London. The infamous Broad Street cholera epidemic ultimately claimed 616 lives. Consequently, this small piece of material culture is more than an object; it represents a turning point in the study of infection and disease.

What made this pump so significant? In August 1854, the bacterial infection cholera began to spread rapidly around the Soho area. Within days, the outbreak escalated to a full-blown crisis. People fell ill rapidly, suffering from severe dehydration and diarrhoea, and no one was able to pinpoint its source.

In comes John Snow, a curious and determined physician. He began investigating by knocking on doors throughout the Golden Square neighbourhood, questioning all residents about their water consumption. Snow then created a now-famous map, marking the location of each death with a black dot. His findings revealed that, while deaths were scattered across the area, many victims had one thing in common: they regularly drank from or passed by the Broad Street Pump.

In a twist, the contamination was traced back to a single source - a sick baby. However, Snow's breakthrough wasn't just about solving a local mystery; it set the foundation for modern epidemiology - the study of patterns of disease and their causes.

As a history-obsessed 16-year-old, I was determined to find the pump after learning about it in the GCSE‘Medicine Through Time’ topic. Surveying Soho, the pump itself seemed unassuming, aside from the nearby pub aptly named ‘John Snow’. While I couldn’t exactly drink from the pump, standing by this historic site gave me a surreal and fascinating connection to the past.

The Broad Street Pump is a powerful, tangible link to a transformative moment in public health history. It demonstrates how one man’s actions helped to unlock the science behind disease transmission, changing the course of medicine and forever shaping how we confront epidemics.

Bibliography

Ball, Laura, ‘Cholera and the Pump on Broad Street: The Life and Legacy of John Snow’, The         History Teacher, Vol.43, No.1 (2009), 105-119

Tulchinsky, Theodore H., ‘John Snow, Cholera, the Broad Street Pump; Waterborne Diseases Then and Now’, Case Studies in Public Health, (2018), 77-99