Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain.
It was one of the most prolific diseases of the Industrial Revolution.
There was a palpable public anxiety about the disease in the Victorian era, no doubt fueled by media coverage of major outbreaks across the nation, but also because Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died of the disease in 1861.
Their son and heir, Prince Albert Edward, contracted and nearly succumbed to .