The Greville Memoirs, Part 1 (of 3), Volume 2 (of 3) by Charles Greville Henry Reeve

Author:Charles Greville, Henry Reeve, [Charles Greville, Henry Reeve,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

November 14th, 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 OVERTURES FOR A COMPROMISE. 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.

I saw Lord Wharncliffe last night, just returned from Yorkshire; he gives a bad account of the state of the public mind; he thinks that there is a strong revolutionary spirit abroad; told me that the Duke of Wellington had written to the King a memorial upon the danger of the associations that were on foot.

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