Henry Whitehead

Who was Henry Whitehead?

The Reverend Henry Whitehead was a Church of England cleric and the assistant curate at St. Luke's church in Soho, London during the 1854 cholera outbreak.

A believer in the miasma theory of disease, Whitehead worked to disprove false theories, eventually coming to prefer Dr. John Snow's idea that cholera spreads through water contaminated by human waste. Snow's work — and Whitehead's own investigations — convinced Whitehead that the Broad Street pump was the source of the local infections. Whitehead then joined with Snow in tracking the contamination to a faulty cesspool and the outbreak's index case.

Whitehead's work with Snow combined demographic study with scientific observation, setting important precedent for the burgeoning science of epidemiology.

Whitehead served as a clergyman in several other London parishes before moving to Newlands in Cumberland in 1884, and finally to become vicar of Lanercost for five years until his death.