Love in the t̶i̶m̶e̶ pub of cholera
This is the first in a new series of blogs. More information is provided at the end.
The John Snow pub in Soho, London connects an important scientific discovery from the 19th century with an act of gay pride, freedom of expression and equality orchestrated using those most modern artefacts, Facebook and Twitter.
The pub is named after the medic and researcher, John Snow, who lived and worked in the area during the middle of the 1800s. Snow played a key role in understanding the causes of cholera, mitigating the epidemic which swept through the district in 1854 and paving the way for a big advance in public health. Snow’s key insight was that cholera was water-borne, which ran against the prevailing wisdom that it was transmitted through the air.
Through his study of the incidence of cholera deaths, Snow helped create the field of epidemiology. He also contributed to the practice of data presentation — his visual representation of the incidence of deaths from the cholera outbreak, using a spot map, is widely celebrated and known today as “the ghost map”.
“The ghost map” is the title of a book about the epidemic by US-based writer, Steven Johnson. Johnson’s book teems with ideas, with the quest to understand and conquer the 1854 cholera outbreak the central story. Snow is the hero of this story; a physician, a pioneering anaesthetist and, also, a researcher who busied himself with statistics about cholera deaths in order to test his hypothesis about the disease. As the epidemic swept through this busy part of Victorian London, killing hundreds of people in a matter of days, Snow hunted down statistics and data. This included traipsing from house to house where people had died to ask which water pumps people used. Snow visited literally hundreds of households in his research so as to isolate the Broad Street pump as the cause of the epidemic.
It is not too much of a flight of fancy to think of this work as an early form of data science and Snow himself as a 19th-century data scientist. His determination to collect, collate and analyse data from different sources to understand why deaths were occurring and establish the true cause of cholera, showed an admirable commitment to the importance of statistics and evidence.
The John Snow pub is on Broadwick Street by the site of the water pump, a replica of which was recently restored. The pub stands as a tribute to the great physician and, if you will, data scientist. Above the pub, a plaque from the Royal Society of Chemistry commemorates Snow as the father of epidemiology, though this, as well as the historic connections of the site, are largely ignored by busy Londoners going about their work and play.
In his book, Johnson speculates on how contemporaries of Snow would regard changes to the area since the 1850s. Johnson notes that the pub is one constant, albeit named the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne until 1956.
Snow himself signed an abstinence pledge when a young man, so might have been bemused to note a pub named in his honour. He might have been further bemused and even bewildered, if he had landed outside the pub on 15 April 2011. That evening a mass kiss-in was taking place outside, mostly involving gay couples.
The idea for the kiss-in began after the pub ejected two men for kissing two days previously. Jonathan Williams and John Bull, two young Londoners, had gone to the pub on a first date after a meal in nearby Covent Garden. When inside, they kissed and were asked to leave by someone claiming to be the landlord. The story spread and a gay kiss-in protest was organised by Paul Shetler, a technologist and entrepreneur (you can hear an interview with Shetler here). Shetler used Facebook to arrange the event and more than 500 planned to attend. Meanwhile, John Williams complained on Twitter about his treatment. The result was hundreds of people attending a mass kiss-in outside the pub on that Friday evening (the pub itself closed for the duration of the event).
If bemused by both the pub and the kissing, Snow might have been intrigued by the way that data and technology facilitated social action in this way. Perhaps he would have been fascinated by the idea of data science and happy to be called a data scientist, using data tools and platforms for social good.
Solving the riddle of what causes the spread of cholera is a different challenge to creating a tolerant and inclusive society in which all rights are respected and people treated equally. The name of John Snow — as a social researcher, statistician, early data scientist and, maybe above all, pub — now brings them together. Internet searches on John Snow, pub and Soho produce this mix of history and modern social commentary.
That John Snow’s name is linked not just with the discovery of the cause of cholera, but also with a London-based pub and gay couples kissing, is surely a cause for celebration. One can search for an underlying link in the importance of data or algorithms to progress and how we live. More simply, one can see it as a delightful idiosyncrasy connecting historic with modern London life.
This is the first in a series of blogs from Brookes Impact Partnership. Many will focus on the core work of BIP — helping charity chief executives through periods of strategic change, giving them extra capacity and a spare pair of hands to ensure they are successful. Some will be ideas aimed at making the charity sector more effective. Others will be interesting perspectives on any topics of interest or relevance to charities. This blog is in that final category. Please do get in touch with any comments.
Martin Brookes
Brookes Impact Partnership
Martin Brookes
15 January 2019
