Some years ago, I read The Ghost Map, the story of John Snow’s careful plotting of the Cholera Outbreak of 1854, which led to the discovery that cholera is a waterbourne disease. The book I’ve just started was going to use cholera as a plot device. My hero is a recluse. My heroine is asked to bring his female dependents to him to escape a cholera epidemic at their school, but by the time she arrives at the house she realises that they’ve bought the disease with them. Sadly, the book is set in 1812, and a bit of research showed that the first outbreak in England didn’t start until 1831. In the video clip below, they talk about the 1832 outbreak, in which 55,000 people died, most of them poor and hungry.

I guess I’ll have to save cholera for another time. Meanwhile, there’s always typhus or smallpox. Or measles, come to that. Measles might work well!