The
Chicago 1885 cholera epidemic myth is a persistent
urban legendAn urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale, more properly a "'contemporary legend'" is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them...
, stating that 90,000 people in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and with more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city in the United States...
died of
typhoid feverTyphoid fever, also known as enteric fever, Salmonella typhi or commonly just typhoid, is an illness. Common worldwide, it is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. The bacteria then perforate through the intestinal wall and are phagocytosed...
and
choleraCholera, sometimes known as Asiatic or epidemic cholera, is an infectious gastroenteritis caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae from other cholera patients...
in 1885. Although the story is widely reported, these deaths did not occur.
Lake MichiganLake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, and the only one located entirely within the United States. The second largest of the Great Lakes by volume The third largest of the Great Lakes by surface area , it is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin,...
was the source of Chicago's drinking water. During a tremendous storm in 1885, the rainfall washed refuse from the
Chicago RiverThe Chicago River is a river that runs 156 miles and flows through Chicago, including the downtown. Though not especially long, the river is notable for the 19th century civil engineering feats that directed its flow south, away from Lake Michigan, into which it previously emptied, and towards...
far out into the lake and locals feared the sewage would reach the city's water intake cribs, two miles offshore.
According to the legend, typhoid, cholera and other waterborne diseases from the contaminated drinking water killed up to 90,000 people.
The
Chicago 1885 cholera epidemic myth is a persistent
urban legendAn urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale, more properly a "'contemporary legend'" is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them...
, stating that 90,000 people in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and with more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city in the United States...
died of
typhoid feverTyphoid fever, also known as enteric fever, Salmonella typhi or commonly just typhoid, is an illness. Common worldwide, it is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. The bacteria then perforate through the intestinal wall and are phagocytosed...
and
choleraCholera, sometimes known as Asiatic or epidemic cholera, is an infectious gastroenteritis caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae from other cholera patients...
in 1885. Although the story is widely reported, these deaths did not occur.
Lake MichiganLake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, and the only one located entirely within the United States. The second largest of the Great Lakes by volume The third largest of the Great Lakes by surface area , it is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin,...
was the source of Chicago's drinking water. During a tremendous storm in 1885, the rainfall washed refuse from the
Chicago RiverThe Chicago River is a river that runs 156 miles and flows through Chicago, including the downtown. Though not especially long, the river is notable for the 19th century civil engineering feats that directed its flow south, away from Lake Michigan, into which it previously emptied, and towards...
far out into the lake and locals feared the sewage would reach the city's water intake cribs, two miles offshore.
According to the legend, typhoid, cholera and other waterborne diseases from the contaminated drinking water killed up to 90,000 people. The Chicago Sanitary District (now
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation DistrictThe Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago is a sanitary district, a type of special-purpose district, chartered in northern Illinois. It is an independent unit of local government with an elected Board of Commissioners...
) was said to have been created by the Illinois legislature in 1889 in response to a terrible epidemic which killed thousands of residents of this fledgling city.
However, analysis of the deaths in Chicago shows no deaths from cholera and only a slight rise in typhoid deaths. In fact, no cholera outbreaks had occurred in Chicago since the 1860s. Typhoid deaths never exceeded 1,000 in any year in the 1880s. The supposed 90,000 deaths would have represented 12% of the city's entire population and would have left numerous public records as well as newspaper accounts. Libby Hill, researching her book
The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History, found no newspaper or mortality records and, at her prompting, the
Chicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company...
issued a retraction (on September 29, 2005) of the three recent instances where they had mentioned the epidemic.
Actual deaths
An outbreak of cholera in 1849 killed 678 persons, 2.9 percent of the city's population. Another cholera epidemic hit the city in 1866 and 1867. In the late 19th century, typhoid fever mortality rate in Chicago averaged 65 per 100,000 people a year. The worst year was 1891, when the typhoid death rate was 174 per 100,000 persons.
One of the most famous people to die from typhoid fever in Chicago was
Stephen A. DouglasStephen Arnold Douglas , son of Stephen Arnold Douglass and Sarah Fisk, was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in...
, a
DemocratThe Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. In the U.S...
contender in the
1860 presidential electionThe United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in the territories...
, who died on June 3, 1861.
Sources repeating myth
Rebuttal