How the Victorians Mapped London’s Cholera – Spatial.ly
▻https://spatial.ly/2019/03/mapping-and-visualising-cholera-data
It is, of course, John Snow who is credited with using maps to demonstrate that the clusters of deaths from cholera in London’s Soho during London’s 1854 outbreak were caused by contaminated water. This marked a major shift in thinking away from the disease being transmitted through dirty air: the more widely accepted theory at the time.
However, it wasn’t just Snow producing innovative maps and charts to support his cause. Snow was part of an arms race to get the best data communicated by the most compelling maps/ charts, to evidence his side of the debate against his contemporaries – people like William Farr who was also a master data visualiser.
The Wellcome Collection’s image catalogue contains many great examples of maps and charts produced around the 1850s . These images are high resolution and free to use under a CC-BY 4.0 license. Most have very little information associated with them, but I think many are worth sharing because they such amazing examples of Victorian data visualisation. I have pasted them here with the catalogue details where they have them (in no particular order). I’ve included the original links back to the high resolution image in the collection. Enjoy!