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At War with the Invisible: The Deadly Miasma

The Reverend Henry Whitehead said a short and mumbled prayer over the body of John James Morters and quickly re-covered his own nose and mouth with a scented hankie. He turned and nodded to the undertakers. They took the shrouded body and half threw it into the waiting cart. They didn’t want to hang around in a cholera house; neither did the Reverend. He had attended a few such deaths recently. He thought there were far too many deaths. He walked out into the stench filled air of Soho’s Broad Street, took a short breath and covered his face again. The undertaker coughed and forcefully spat out a gobbet of phlegm, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the Reverend, ‘’Pologies Sir. It’ll be the stink what gets ‘em too Sir. Taken a few from round ‘ere.’ ‘I don’t subscribe to the theory of bad air my good man. It may stink but it carries no disease.’ ‘That’s as well as like Sir. But we seen ‘em all off. Usually from places such as this stinking hole.’ ‘Have you had m...