How many people died from the typhoid outbreak in Cardiff in 1847?

• A. 50 people
• B. 200 people
• C. 400 people
• D. 150 people

Answer: (B)

Understanding the scale of a nineteenth-century urban outbreak helps you see how disease affected communities before modern sanitation. In Cardiff in 1847, records from parish registers, hospitals, and local boards of health point to around two hundred deaths from typhoid. This figure reflects a significant impact on the town, driven by water and sanitation conditions of the era, but not an eruption on the scale of a city-wide catastrophe.

Other numbers don’t fit as well with the surviving evidence. A much smaller figure would suggest a far less serious episode, while a figure as high as four hundred would imply a much larger death toll than the contemporary sources indicate. One hundred fifty is less commonly cited in GCSE materials for this outbreak. Therefore, about two hundred deaths is the best-supported answer given the historical records.