Broad Street pump
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Sited at the junction of Broad Street (today Broadwick Street) and Cambridge Street (today Lexington Street) in Soho, London W1, close to the rear wall of what is today is the John Snow pub.
A source of water for part of Soho. During a cholera outbreak in 1854 the local physician and notable anaesthetist Dr John Snow, who lived on Dean Street (nearly opposite Karl Marx), noted the addresses of the sick, and saw they were all people whose nearest access to water was this pump. Only the employees of a nearby brewery were unaffected. He famously pursuaded the parish council to remove the handle of the pump, thus preventing any more of the infected water being collected. The spring below the pump was later found to be contaminated with sewage. This is an early example of epidemiology, public health medicine and the application of science - the germ theory of disease - in real time.
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