Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It affects both adults and children. Most people infected with the bacterium do not have any symptoms but the bacteria are present in their faeces for up to 10 days after infection, potentially infecting other people. A minority of people who are infected develop acute watery diarrhoea with severe dehydration. This can lead to death if left untreated.
Cholera was common in Asia and reached Europe in 1829. The first death from cholera in England was in Sunderland in October 1831. There were outbreaks in many other towns and cities in Scotland and England in the following months until the end of 1832.
There was a second epidemic of cholera in Britain, which started in Edinburgh in 1848 and lasted until the end of 1849, by which time it had killed more than 53,000 people in England and Wales. There was third epidemic of cholera in Britain 1853-54 and smaller outbreaks in 1865 and 1893.
In 1849 a cholera outbreak in Bridgwater killed more than 200 people. 88 of the dead lived in the Eastover area of the town and they were buried in a mass grave in the graveyard of the church of St John the Baptist. The site of the grave is marked by an original (now broken and almost illegible) headstone and a modern replacement. The wording is as follows:
In Memory of the decease of 88 persons from cholera, 1849. From plague, pestilence and sudden death, Good Lord deliver us.
