Catalogue description Folios 354-358. To: The President of the General Board of Health. From: William Lee,...

Folios 354-358.

To: The President of the General Board of Health.

From: William Lee, Superintending Inspector, The General Board of Health.

Minutes of an inspection at Gateshead [Durham] during the present visitation of cholera to that district. Lee describes the 'disgusting' sanitary conditions that currently exist within various localities of the district (including Pipewellgate, Rabbit Banks, Leonards Court and Hillgate). He further remarks upon 'the quietness resulting from an almost entire cessation of business traffic'; the absence from the district of all respectable persons, 'except those whom imperative duty required to be there'; 'the anxious importunity of wretched, half-clad females soliciting the means of drowning their excitement in intoxication'; 'the panic stricken countenances of others who had lost all power of motion from fear'; being followed by mistake along the streets and asked for medicine 'by human beings, alive - but already touched by the finger of the Destroyer, and destined in all probability to be soon numbered among the victims'. Lee adds that 'among the chief sounds that meet the ear are the moans and the bitterness of the bereaved husbands and wives, parents and orphans'. He concludes that these 'melancholy, awful features ... show not only the exceedingly small value of human life in the locality; but also, that all social and moral feelings are destroyed; and that man becomes utterly brutalised, when surrounded by such degrading physical circumstances as exist in Hillgate, in the borough of Gateshead'.