ABSTRACT
The events in Sunderland showed that the Central Board of Health in London hoped to contain any spread of cholera in Britain by the active co-operation of rate-raising and rate-spending Local Boards of Health, guided by medical officers employed by the Central Board. During the winter of 1831-1832 the Central Board of Health saw the crumbling of those plans which had been so carefully researched over the summer and published in the three great circulars. The greatest of all the failures of legal authority was the lack of effective power to raise local finance. There were failures of authority, failures of information and failures of knowledge. The approach and the incidence of cholera revealed the different interests, values, perspectives and resources of different social and economic groups in two ways, firstly in the choice of victims, and then in the different reactions of different social groups to the threat and presence of epidemic.
