Greville Memoirs. 19 Jun 1831. The last few days I have been completely taken up with quarantine, and taking means to prevent the cholera coming here. That disease made great ravages in Russia last year, and in the winter the attention of Government was called to it, and the question was raised whether we should have to purify goods coming here in case it broke out again, and if so how it was to be done. Government was thinking of Reform and other matters, and would not bestow much attention upon this subject, and accordingly neither regulations nor preparations were made. All that was done was to commission a Dr. Walker, a physician residing at St. Petersburg, to go to Moscow and elsewhere and make enquiries into the nature and progress of the disease, and report the result of his investigation to us. He turned out, however, to be a very useless and inefficient agent. In the meantime as the warm weather returned the cholera again appeared in Russia, but still we took no further measures until intelligence arrived that it had reached Riga, at which place 700 or 800 sail of English vessels, loaded principally with hemp and flax, were waiting to come to this country. This report soon diffused a general alarm, and for many days past the newspapers have been full of letters and full of lies, and every sort of representation is made to Government or through the press, as fear or interest happen to dictate. The Consuls and Ministers abroad had been for some time supplying us with such information as they could obtain, so that we were in possession of a great deal of documentary evidence regarding the nature, character, and progress of the disease. The first thing we did was to issue two successive Orders in Council placing all vessels coming from the Baltic in quarantine, and we sent for Sir Henry Halford and placed all the papers we had in his hands, desiring that he would associate with himself some other practitioners, and report their opinion as speedily as possible whether the disease was contagious and whether it could be conveyed by goods. They reported the next day yes to the first question, no to the second. In 1804, on the occasion of the yellow fever at Gibraltar, Government formed a Board of Health, and took the opinion of the College of Physicians, and it was intended to pursue the same course in this instance, but Lords Lansdowne and Auckland chose to take Halford's preliminary opinion, contrary to my advice, for I foresaw that there would be a great embarrassment if he and the College did not agree. Just so it turned out, for when the case was submitted, with all the papers, to the College, they would not adopt his opinion, much to his annoyance, and, as I believe, because they did not like to be merely called on to confirm what he had already said, and that they thought their independence required a show of dissent. The report they sent was very short and very unsatisfactory, and entirely against all the evidence they had before them; they advised precautionary measures. I immediately wrote back an answer saying that their report was not satisfactory, and desiring a more detailed opinion, and the reasons which had dictated their conclusion; but in the meantime we set to work in earnest to adopt measures against any emergency. The only way of performing quarantine (with goods), it was found, would be by the employment of men-of-war, and we accordingly asked the Admiralty to supply ships for the purpose. This Lord Grey, Sir James Graham, and Sir Byam Martin objected to, but Sir Thomas Hardy and Captain Elliot did not. We proved that the ships would sustain no injury, so after a battle they agreed to give them. We made a variety of regulations, and gave strict orders for the due performance of quarantine, and to-morrow a proclamation is to be issued for constituting a Board of Health and enjoining obedience to the quarantine laws, so that everything has been done that can be done, and if the cholera comes here it is not our fault. Most of the authorities think it will come, but I doubt it. If indeed it is wafted through the air it may, but I don't think it will if it is only to be communicated by contact. All the evidence proves that goods cannot convey it; nevertheless we have placed merchandise under a discretionary quarantine, and though we have not promulgated any general regulations, we release no vessels that come from infected places, or that have got enumerated goods on board. Poulett Thomson, who is a trader as well as Privy Councillor, is very much disgusted in his former capacity at the measures he is obliged to concur in in his latter. This topic has now occupied for some days a good deal of the attention even of the fine fools of this town, and the Tories would even make it a matter of party accusation against the Government, only they don't know exactly how. It is always safe to deal in generalities, so they say that 'Government ought to be impeached if the disease comes here.'

Greville Memoirs. 23 Jun 1831. News came the day before yesterday that Marshal Diebitsch had died of the cholera. It was suspected that he had made away with himself, for he has failed so signally in his campaign against the Poles that his military reputation is tarnished; and it is known that his recall had been decreed, and that Count Paskiewitch was to succeed him. The alarm about the cholera still continues, but the Government are thrown into great perplexity by the danger on one hand of the cholera and the loss to trade on the other. A board of health has been formed, composed of certain members of the College of Physicians, Sir William Pym, Sir William Burnet, Sir Byam Martin, Sir James M'Grigor, and Mr. Stewart; and they in their first sitting advised that all the precautions established by our Orders in Council against the plague should be adopted against the cholera. This opinion was given under the authority of Dr. Warren, who, it appears, exercises the same ascendency in this Board that he had previously done in the College of Physicians on the same subject. The fact is that he takes the safe side. They have nothing to do with trade and commerce, which must shift for themselves, and probably the other members will not take upon themselves the responsibility of opposing measures which, if the disease ever appears here, and should they be relaxed, will expose the physicians to the odium and reproach of having been instrumental to its introduction. We, however (Auckland, Poulett Thomson, and I), are resolved to make the Cabinet take upon themselves the responsibility of framing the permanent rules which are to guide us during the continuance of the malady. It is remarkable that there never was more sickness than there is at present, without its being epidemic, but thousands of colds, sore throats, fevers, and such like; and a man at Blackwall has died of the English cholera, and another is ill of it, but their disorders seem to have nothing to do with the Indian cholera, though some of the symptoms are similar. These men cannot have got their cholera from Russia, but their cases spread alarm.

Greville Memoirs. 08 Jul 1831. People are beginning to recover from their terror of the cholera, seeing that it does not come, and we are now beset with alarms of a different kind, which are those of the Scotch merchants for their cargoes. We have a most CONTEST IN POLAND.disagreeable business on our hands, very troublesome, odious, and expensive. The public requires that we should take care of its health, the mercantile world that we should not injure their trade. All evidence proves that goods are not capable of bringing in the disorder, but we have appointed a Board of Health, which is contagionist, and we can't get them to subscribe to that opinion. We dare not act without its sanction, and so we are obliged to air goods. This airing requires more ships and lazarets than we have, and the result is a perpetual squabbling, disputing, and complaining between the Privy Council, the Admiralty, the Board of Health, and the merchants. We have gone on pretty well hitherto, but more ships arrive every day; the complaints will grow louder, and the disease rather spreads than diminishes on the Continent. This cholera has afforded strong proofs of the partiality of the Prussians in the contest between the Russians and the Poles. The quarantine restrictions are always dispensed with for officers passing through the Prussian territory to join the Russian army. Count Paskiewitch was allowed to pass without performing any quarantine at all, and stores and provisions are suffered to be conveyed to the army, with every facility afforded by the Prussian authorities and every relaxation of the sanitary laws. The Duke of Wellington says that the contest will very soon be over, that the Russian army could not act before June, and that between February and June the country is not practicable for military operations. They have now so many months before them that the weight of their numerical superiority will crush the Poles. Austria and Prussia, too, do their utmost by affording every sort of indirect assistance to the Russians and thwarting the Poles as much as they can.

Greville Memoirs. 11 Nov 1831. London. Nothing written for a long time; I went after the second October meeting to Euston, and from thence to Horsham, returned to Newmarket, was going to Felbrigg, but came to town on Tuesday last (the 8th) on account of the cholera, which has broken out at Sunderland. The country was beginning to slumber after the fatigues of Reform, when it was rattled up by the business of Bristol³, which for brutal ferocity and wanton, unprovoked violence may vie with some of the worst scenes of the French Revolution, and may act as a damper to our national pride. The spirit which produced these atrocities was generated by Reform, but no pretext was afforded for their actual commission; it was a premature outbreaking of the thirst for plunder, and longing after havoc and destruction, which is the essence of Reform in the mind of the mob. The details are ample, and to be met with everywhere; nothing could exceed the ferocity of the populace, the imbecility of the magistracy, or the good conduct of the troops. More punishment was inflicted by them than has been generally known, and some hundreds were killed or severely wounded by the sabre. One body of dragoons pursued a rabble of colliers into the country, and covered the fields and roads with the bodies of wounded wretches, making a severe example of them. In London there would probably have been a great uproar and riot, but fortunately Melbourne, who was frightened to death at the Bristol affair, gave Lord Hill and Fitzroy Somerset carte blanche, and they made such a provision of military force in addition to the civil power that the malcontents were paralysed. The Bristol business has done some good, inasmuch as it has opened people's eyes (at least so it is said), but if we are to go on as we do with a mob-ridden Government and a foolish King, who renders himself subservient to all the wickedness and folly of his Ministers, where is the advantage of having people's eyes open, when seeing they will not perceive, and hearing they will not understand? Nothing was wanting to complete our situation but the addition of physical evil to our moral plague, and that is come in the shape of the cholera, which broke out at Sunderland a few days ago. To meet the exigency Government has formed another Board of Health, but without dissolving the first, though the second is intended to swallow up the first and leave it a mere nullity. Lord Lansdowne, who is President of the Council, an office which for once promises not to be a sinecure, has taken the opportunity to go to Bowood, and having come up (sent for express) on account of the cholera the day it was officially declared really to be that disease, he has trotted back to his house in the country.

Note 3. Riots broke out with great violence at Bristol on the 29th of October, the pretext being the entry of Sir Charles Wetherell into that city (of which he was Recorder), who was notorious for his violent opposition to the Reform Bill. Much property was destroyed, and many lives lost.

Greville Memoirs. 14 Nov 1831. For the last two or three days the reports from Sunderland about the cholera have been of a doubtful character. The disease makes so little progress that the doctors begin again to doubt whether it is the Indian cholera, and the merchants, shipowners, and inhabitants, who suffer from the restraints imposed upon an infected place, are loudly complaining of the measures which have been adopted, and strenuously insisting that their town is in a more healthy state than usual, and that the disease is no more than what it always is visited with every year at this season. In the meantime all preparations are going on in London, just as if the disorder was actually on its way to the metropolis. We have a Board at the Council Office, between which and the Board at the College some civilities have passed, and the latter is now ready to yield up its functions to the former, which, however, will not be regularly constituted without much difficulty and many jealousies, all owing to official carelessness and mismanagement. The Board has been diligently employed in drawing up suggestions and instructions to local boards and parochial authorities, and great activity has prevailed here in establishing committees for the purpose of visiting the different districts of the metropolis, and making such arrangements as may be necessary in the event of sickness breaking out. There is no lack of money or labour for this end, and one great good will be accomplished let what will happen, for much of the filth and misery of the town will be brought to light, and the condition of the poorer and more wretched of the inhabitants can hardly fail to be ameliorated. The reports from Sunderland exhibit a state of human misery, and necessarily of moral degradation, such as I hardly ever heard of, and it is no wonder, when a great part of the community is plunged into such a condition (and we may fairly suppose that there is a gradually mounting scale, with every degree of wretchedness up to the wealth and splendour which glitter on the surface of society), that there should be so many who are ripe for any desperate scheme of revolution. At Sunderland they say there are houses with 150 inmates, who are huddled five and six in a bed. They are in the lowest state of poverty. The sick in these receptacles are attended by an apothecary's boy, who brings them (or I suppose tosses them) medicines without distinction or enquiry.

Greville Memoirs. 22 Nov 1831. The cholera, which is going on (but without greatly extending itself) at Sunderland, has excited an unusual alarm, but it is now beginning to subside. People seeing that it does not appear elsewhere take courage, but the preparations are not relaxed, and they are constantly enforced by the Central Board of Health (as it is called), which is established at the Council Office, and labours very assiduously in the cause. Undoubtedly a great deal of good will be done in the way of purification. As to the disorder, if it had not the name of cholera nobody would be alarmed, for many an epidemic has prevailed at different times far more fatal than this. On Friday last we despatched Dr. Barry down to Sunderland with very ample powers, and to procure information, which it is very difficult to get. Nothing can be more disgraceful than the state of that town, exhibiting a lamentable proof of the practical inutility of that diffusion of knowledge and education which we boast of, and which we fancy renders us so morally and intellectually superior to the rest of the world. When Dr. Russell was in Russia, he was disgusted with the violence and prejudices he found there on the part of both medical men and the people, and he says he finds just as much here. The conduct of the people of Sunderland on this occasion is more suitable to the barbarism of the interior of Africa than to a town in a civilised country. The medical men and the higher classes are split into parties, quarrelling about the nature of the disease, and perverting and concealing facts which militate against their respective theories. The people are taught to believe that there is really no cholera at all, and that those who say so intend to plunder and murder them. The consequence is prodigious irritation and excitement, an invincible repugnance on the part of the lower orders to avail themselves of any of the preparations which are made for curing them, and a proneness to believe any reports, however monstrous and exaggerated. In a very curious letter which was received yesterday from Dr. Daur, he says (after complaining of the medical men, who would send him no returns of the cases of sickness) it was believed that bodies had been dissected before the life was out of them, and one woman, was said to have been cut up while she was begging to be spared. The consequence of this is that we have put forward a strong order to compel medical men to give information, and another for the compulsory removal of nuisances. It is, however, rather amusing that everybody who has got in their vicinity anything disagreeable, or that they would like to be rid of, thinks that now is their time, and the table of the Board of Health is covered with applications of this nature, from every variety of person and of place.

Greville Memoirs. 01 Apr 1832. I have refrained for a long time from writing down anything about the cholera, because the subject is intolerably disgusting to me, and I have been bored past endurance by the perpetual questions of every fool about it. It is not, however, devoid of interest. In the first place, what has happened here proves that 'the people' of this enlightened, reading, thinking, reforming nation are not a whit less barbarous than the serfs in Russia, for precisely the same prejudices have been shown here that were found at St. Petersburg and at Berlin. The disease has undoubtedly appeared (hitherto) in this country in a milder shape than elsewhere, but the alarm at its name was so great that the Government could do no otherwise than take such precautions and means of safety as appeared best to avert the danger or mitigate its consequences. Here it came, and the immediate effect was a great inconvenience to trade and commerce, owing to restrictions, both those imposed by foreigners generally on this country and those we imposed ourselves between the healthy and unhealthy places. This begot complaints and disputes, and professional prejudices and jealousies urged a host of combatants into the field, to fight about the existence or non-existence of cholera, its contagiousness, and any collateral question. The disposition of the public was (and is) to believe that the whole thing was a humbug, and accordingly plenty of people were found to write in that sense, and the press lent itself to propagate the same idea. The disease, however, kept creeping on, the Boards of Health which were everywhere established immediately became odious, and the vestries and parishes stoutly resisted all pecuniary demands for the purpose of carrying into effect the recommendations of the Central Board or the orders of the Privy Council. In this town the mob has taken the part of the anti-cholerites, and the most disgraceful scenes have occurred. The other day a Mr. Pope, head of the hospital in Marylebone (Cholera Hospital) came to the Council Office to complain that a patient who was being removed with his own consent had been taken out of his chair by the mob and carried back, the chair broken, and the bearers and surgeon hardly escaping with their lives. Furious contests have taken place about the burials, it having been recommended that bodies should be burned directly after death, and the most violent prejudice opposing itself to this recommendation; in short, there is no end to the scenes of uproar, violence, and brutal ignorance that have gone on, and this on the part of the lower orders, for whose especial benefit all the precautions are taken, and for whose relief large sums have been raised and all the resources of charity called into activity in every part of the town. The awful thing is the vast extent of misery and distress which prevails, and the evidence of the rotten foundation on which the whole fabric of this gorgeous society rests, for I call that rotten which exhibits thousands upon thousands of human beings reduced to the lowest stage of moral and physical degradation, with no more of the necessaries of life than serve to keep body and soul together, whole classes of artisans without the means of subsistence. However complicated and remote the causes of this state of things, the manifestations present themselves in a frightful presence and reality, and those whose ingenuity, and experience, and philosophical views may enable them accurately to point out the causes and the gradual increase of this distress are totally unable to suggest a remedy or to foresee an end to it. Can such a state of things permanently go on? can any reform ameliorate it? Is it possible for any country to be considered in a healthy condition when there is no such thing as a general diffusion of the comforts of life (varying of course with every variety of circumstance which can affect the prosperity of individuals or of classes), but when the extremes prevail of the most unbounded luxury and enjoyment and the most dreadful privation and suffering? To imagine a state of society in which everybody should be well off, or even tolerably well off, would be a mere vision, as long as there is a preponderance of vice and folly in the world. There will always be effects commensurate with their causes, but it has not always been, and it certainly need not be, that the majority of the population should be in great difficulty, struggling to keep themselves afloat, and, what is worse, in uncertainty and in doubt whether they can earn subsistence for themselves and their families. Such is the case at present, and I believe a general uncertainty pervades every class of society, from the highest to the lowest; nobody looks upon any institution as secure, or any interest as safe, and it is only because those universal feelings of alarm which are equally diffused throughout the mass but slightly affect each individual atom of it that we see the world go on as usual, eating, drinking, laughing, and dancing, and not insensible to the danger, though, apparently indifferent about it.