Cholera bacteria breeds in human excrement and infects the small intestine of those who ingest it. Her waste accumulated in the cesspool and bred the cholera bacteria that ultimately contaminated the water and caused the cholera outbreak.

The wash water was disposed of in a local cesspool that fed the Broad Street pump, a source of clear water that many in the neighborhood relied upon for the drinking and cooking water. The soiled cloth diapers were soaked in vats of water and then washed. She had diarrhea that required a constant changing of her diapers. The source of her illness was unknown at the time. In August 1854, the five-month-old daughter of Thomas and Sarah Lewis became ill. Soho was located in the central part of the Golden Square and was a cross-mixture of the classes and a place that attracted artists and socialists and even drew the interest of a Prussian immigrant named Karl Marx who lived there with his young family. Most of the residents of London Square were middle and upper class Londoners who tended to look down on the Soho residents. Thomas and Sarah Lewis lived in Soho on Broad Street within an area that was known as the Golden Square. When the sewage contaminated clear water it was the precursor for the spawning of the cholera bacterium. There was a shadow world of scavengers who trudged through the contaminated Thames River where the sewage from three million people wound up. Victorian London was over-crowded and had not established a waste system that separated clear drinking water from sewage. It also describes the investigative work accomplished by two Londoners who were determined to find the source of the scourge.

The Ghost Map tells the story of the cholera epidemic of 1854 in Victorian London.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson