Monday, February 08, 2016

Maps in the Age of Cholera


Twenty Years before John Snow famously mapped the locations of cholera victims in Broad Street, London, Robert Baker plotted the deaths of cholera victims in Leeds.

Maps in the Age of Cholera is a story map based around Robert Baker's 'Sanitary Map of the Town of Leeds' exploring the 1832 cholera epidemic in the Yorkshire town. Baker never made the link between cholera and contaminated water. However, in his map and in the accompanying report to the Leeds Board of Health, Baker noted that "the disease was worst in those parts of the town where there is often an entire want of sewage, drainage and paving".

The map itself uses this Leaflet Story Map plug-in. The Leaflet Story Map library uses jQuery to create a scroll driven story map. The map tiles scheme for Robert Baker's 1832 'Sanitary Map of the Town of Leeds' comes from Wikimaps Warper.

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