A cholera epidemic sears throughout the city

On June 26, 1854, Hamilton experienced its first cholera death in an epidemic that would later shake the community to its core.

The man who died had only been in the city a short time after arriving from Germany and it was the first death of many. The second fatality was recorded a week later, and then over the next several weeks more than 550 of 16,000 residents in Hamilton died from the disease.

Authorities believe many more died in the epidemic without being reported. An accurate count of the death toll was impossible because many victims were hastily buried without the death being reported to government authorities.

In the aftermath, the city put in place sanitary reforms that included the first city dump so citizens would stop the practice of putting household garbage and dead animal carcasses on city streets. A new waterworks system was built five years later for clean drinking water because authorities recognized the link to contaminated water.

On Sept. 21, 1892, a retired Spectator journalist who had lived through the 1854 cholera epidemic shared his memories:

“The highest number of deaths reached in any one day was 72, but for weeks, the rate ran from about 40 deaths to the highest number. Hamilton was a city of mourning. The wail of anguish was heard on every hand. Nearly entire families would be cut down inside of 48 hours. It was not uncommon to see the coffins of two or three members of one family carried to the cemetery in the same wagon, for hearses were out of the question in those days. Business was at a standstill. Services in the churches were suspended, and, by official proclamation, all public gatherings in theatres and halls were forbidden. Every afternoon, a long line of wagons and hearses would file out King and York streets to the cemeteries. Only the members of the families of the deceased went to funerals in those terrible days. To add to the depression, the weather was intensely hot and dry. How anxiously a shower of rain was looked for, in the hope that it would cool the atmosphere and allay the disease. Old Hamiltonians will never forget those days of sorrow and mourning.”

During construction of the Chedoke Expressway section of Highway 403 in 1962, a mass grave for cholera victims near the Desjardins Canal was removed. The remains of 105 cholera victims were reinterred at the Hamilton Cemetery.