A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [41]
“It’s cholera,” said Lenox.
“Oh, that? Is that what you’re so worked up about, Charles? My dear chap, Bazalgette has solved—”
“He hasn’t!”
Perhaps taken aback by the fierceness of Lenox’s tone, Hilary began to look more serious. “What do you mean?”
“It’s about the poor. They’re still in danger—as anyone who read this report could tell you.”
Cholera had been for much of Victoria’s reign the chief social anxiety of London, England, and indeed the world. In England there had been epidemics in 1831, 1848, 1854, and just last year, in 1866. In the previous decade alone more than ten thousand people had died of the disease.
It had only recently become widely acknowledged that it was a waterborne plague, and the so-called Great Stink of several years ago had galvanized into action the politicians and municipal leaders of London. Joseph Bazalgette, a well-respected engineer working with the Metropolitan Commission for Sewers and its successor, the Board of Works, had designed a new sewage system for London that would make the water of the Thames safe to drink again, and after his plan had been published and executed a couple of years before, towns and cities across the country had begun to copy it. The reformers had won.
But there was a problem. Most of London was connected to the new sewage system, but the part of the city that had suffered the most deaths, East London, where the poorest people lived—it had not. This fact, with its implications, was what had so shocked Lenox. He had assumed before then, not paying very great attention to the matter, that all was solved. It wasn’t. In fact a fresh epidemic was just beginning to show signs of emerging in East London. One of the primary causes of cholera—overfull cemeteries—was still prevalent there, and the water supply was horribly compromised.
Lenox explained all this to Hilary. “It’s all right for the nibs, living around here, and for the middle class, but these people, James! You wouldn’t believe the statistics! Italy has lost a hundred thousand people this year, maybe more. Russia the same. Everywhere in Europe. People couldn’t abide the smell—the smell!—and so we have a new sewage system, but there’s no interest in the death of people in our own city! It’s the most shocking thing I’ve heard since I was elected!”
Hilary shifted uncomfortably in his high-backed wooden chair. “It’s grave indeed, Charles, but I’m afraid we have more pressing concerns at the moment. This reform bill, for one, and of course the colonies—”
Lenox interrupted him. “Surely we have time to handle all of these things at once. As a start we should buy some of these private water companies, which care for nothing but profit, and turn them into municipal concerns.”
“That would require a great deal of money.”
“These are precisely the people we’re supposed to represent. What if this were happening in a small town? Would we help them?” He threw up his hands in disgust. “Any evil can go hiding in London. It’s always been the way, hasn’t it?”
“Charles, you’re new to Parliament. You must understand that we hold human life in the balance every day, and make judgments about how to help people based on our best sense. It’s not pleasant, but it’s our work. When you’ve been in Parliament a year you’ll comprehend—”
“I’ll deliver a speech. I don’t care who listens to it—I don’t especially care who wants to help me, Conservative or our side.”
“A speech!” said Hilary with amused incredulity. “I should think it would be some months before you deliver a speech.”
Lenox realized that he was in the reverse of his usual position: He was the petitioner, like so many grieving people who had come to solicit his services with varying success. It was a helpless, unpleasant feeling.
He decided to try a different tack. “I