The Ghost Map Analysis

The Ghost map was a well put together book that shed light on a past problem that has changed many things about the way we live our lives today. Without the contributions of John Snow and Edwin Chadwik it might have taken many more years to figure out how this epidemic was spreading. In addition, many more people would have died. Because I am a very visual person the hardest part of reading The Ghost Map was while reading it, I visualized how it may have looked and smelled in London during this time period and it was not very pleasant. There were a few times I had to put the book down for a while and think about trees and birds to get the idea of London in the 1800’s out of my head.

Isaac Shaw October 9, 2014 Hist 2020 Dr. Paulauskas Paper #1 In the 1890’s, America was starting to experience changes leading to new revelations in the way it functioned in mass communication, mass transportation, and urbanization. In Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, he brings the seemingly different stories of two men in this time period, one a mass murder, H.H. Holmes and, the other a grand architect, Daniel Burnham to explain how America was changing into a more modern era. First, both Burnham and Holmes used the popularity of urbanization to achieve their individual goals.

The plague caused these two groups to handle a major epidemic drastically different both good and

People died from common sickness like the flu because they lacked medication and health care. Toilets were only able to be flushed once a day, which was bad for the health of the citizen’s and just disgusting. Since everyone was so jam-packed and crowded, crime rates increased tremendously. Tenements lacked running water, electricity, proper ventilation and indoor plumbing. These buildings had no windows.

The authors used the help of physicians and Boards of Health from various towns to discern the impact of the epidemic. Many groups of individuals were affected by the disease, specifically the English, immigrants, and the Canadians (French Canadians and Lower Canadians). The English were known to maintain the customs they brought from their country which focused on “a good

The disease wreaked havoc on the continent for three long years, and it eventually went into Russia (Whipps). Many people believed that the plague was God’s wrath upon man, and they prayed for long hours about this. Due to the danger of trading goods, the economy went through inflation. The prices of goods spiked, and land workers (serfs) were dying very rapidly. This created a huge demand for land workers, and it gave serfs the ability to choose whom they wished to work for (“Social and Economic Effects of the Plague”).

As the industrial revolution progressed into the Gilded Age, life changed a lot for those in the marginalized populations. Working conditions worsened, women in the workforce increased, and wealthy people believed they were above everyone else. Wealth created huge problems for the marginalized populations due to their bad working conditions which included health risks, little pay, and long hours. The number of factories were increasing so fast that the manufacturers started to disregard their workers. During the Gilded Age, many rich people believed that they had superiority over poor people.

The Black Death silently swept across Europe, killing anyone in its path. It made victims suffer by mutating their body into a bumpy, vomiting mess. This all started because of rats. The Black Death lasted a long time, because the people didn’t know that rats spreading the disease. To begin, exhibit C titled "Plagues” explains that San Francisco had a massive earthquake that drove rats “...out of the sewers and into the streets of...”

Due to the scientific work of the Society for Psychical Research, the Victorian ghost story had started to take shape. The SPR solicited ghostly encounters to the public, giving authors the access they needed to write effective eye-catching ghost stories for public consumption. In addition to the scientific research being done in London, the class system started to change. Social Classes: During the middle to the end of the 1800s suburban building in London surged, rents lowered and housing became more affordable for those in the lower class.

Manchester is described as an ugly city that has no beauty and is so filthy and foul it can turn a good man into a savage[doc 2&5].One person questions if the progress was worth the physical suffering [doc 7]. Document 11 shows a painting from The Graphic of the horrible pollution in Manchester where the peasants live. Even though there were negative reactions there was also positive reactions. Many of the nobles agreed that the working conditions improved over the years[doc 10]. Some however, agreed that it should not matter how working conditions are because the peasants have always lived terrible lives[doc 3].Others who do not agree with the others agreed that Manchester was truly beautiful because of the tremendous growth of industry[doc 9].

The reader knows that all was not right in the city because Jim talks about how they had influxes of pigeons and the drought or heat may have been the cause of the fevers. On page 11 in the first paragraph it talks about Catherine LeMaigre and how she was becoming sick. “It was clear that thirty-three-year-old Catherine LeMaigre was dying, and dying horribly and painfully. Between agonized gasps and groans she muttered that her stomach felt as if it were burning up.

It was filthy; chockful of human waste, smoke, and sickness. Robert Southey, an English Romantic poet, wrote after witnessing Manchester’s decline, that industrialization led Manchester to become a place where one only hears, “the everlasting din of machinery, and where; when the bell rings, it is to call the wretches to their work instead of their prayers” (Document #1). It is true that as people moved away from their home churches and to the cities, church attendance declined. The duty of work became constant and life was miserable for many of the working class. Southey, as a romantic, is expectedly biased against industrialization because of the romantic nostalgia and sentimentalism towards the past.

The “The Ghost Map” is a book written by Steven Johnson. In the book, the author explains to us why urban planning is necessary to prevent deadly diseases, such as the deadly cholera outbreak. In 1854, Cholera seized London with incredible force. A capital of more than 2 million people, London had just become as a one of the first modern cities in the society. But lacking the foundation necessary to sustain its dense population - garbage extraction, clean water sources, sewer systems - the city has grown to be the ideal breeding ground for a terrifying epidemic no one understands how to cure.

This is shown through Joe’s lack of education as well as Pip’s until a later age. Additionally, cities were overpopulated, dirty, and noisy. Pip describes this in chapter 20 when he said, “...while I was scared of the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked,

Written in London in the late nineteenth century, The Time Machine by H.G Wells shows an evolution for humanity if humans continue on their path of furthering the development of machines. London in the nineteenth century was the fastest growing city in the world expanding from 1 million residences in 1800 to 6.3 million one century later. This major change was due to increase in technology from the Industrial Revolution. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, and overpopulation in the city, a growing lower class of citizens started to emerge. These lower class citizens spent many hours in dark factories making goods that they could not afford.