In 1876 there was a smallpox outbreak in London and the authorities struggled to find suitable hospital accommodation.
 Some patients were placed in a hospital in Hampstead but this attracted the ire of local residents; one of them, Sir Rowland Hill, sued.
 The authorities then rented the disused Silver factory - sandwiched between the Limehouse Cut and Dod Street - and made plans to convert it into a hospital.
 It infuriated East Enders that West End bureaucrats should send smallpox patients to a crowded working district in Limehouse ("Another opportunity for the West to look down on and revile the denizens of the East" sneered the East London Observer) and there were demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and threats of violence.

Samuel Charlesworth, Rector of St Anne's Limehouse, wrote that it was a very bad place for patients anyway.
 Highly insalubrious, it had no ventilation "to move the fog often settling there, except the current of offensive vapour moving up and down the fœtid canal."
 He, the Rev. Charleswoth, knew the Cut was unhealthy because he lived next to it himself; his children "when at home always fail in health".
 Opposite, six children of one family had died in one month — of some blood infection.
 Their coffins had been superposed in the same grave.
In 1876 there was a smallpox outbreak in London and the authorities struggled to find suitable hospital accommodation.  Some patients were placed in a hospital in Hampstead but this attracted the ire of local residents; one of them, Sir Rowland Hill, sued.  The authorities then rented the disused Silver factory - sandwiched between the Limehouse Cut and Dod Street - and made plans to convert it into a hospital.  It infuriated East Enders that West End bureaucrats should send smallpox patients to a crowded working district in Limehouse ("Another opportunity for the West to look down on and revile the denizens of the East" sneered the East London Observer) and there were demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and threats of violence.
Samuel Charlesworth, Rector of St Anne's Limehouse, wrote that it was a very bad place for patients anyway.  Highly insalubrious, it had no ventilation "to move the fog often settling there, except the current of offensive vapour moving up and down the fœtid canal."  He, the Rev. Charleswoth, knew the Cut was unhealthy because he lived next to it himself; his children "when at home always fail in health".  Opposite, six children of one family had died in one month — of some blood infection.  Their coffins had been superposed in the same grave.
Limehouse Cut