ABSTRACT
William Sproat, a keelman, of Sunderland, County Durham, began his short but disastrous contribution to British medical history on Sunday, 23 October 1831. William Sproat was the first confirmed case of Asiatic cholera in the British Isles. There are many distinctive qualities about cholera that make an enquiry into the death of William Sproat more than an enquiry into the first of 140,000 dead. The 1832 epidemic merits particular attention. The people of 1832 seem very close to the twentieth century in their behaviour. Their economic ambitions, their technology, their political ideas and social ambitions, even their dress is beginning to seem familiar, but the cholera revealed patterns of thought and reaction, especially in matters of medicine and religion. Because of the attention which it demanded, the terror it evoked, because of its unpredictable nature and because we know that it was relatively simple to stop, cholera was well qualified to reveal the morbid pathology of British society in 1832.
