Cholera riots

Influenced by rumors of deliberate contamination of ordinary people by government officials and doctors, agitated mobs started raiding police departments and state hospitals, killing hated functionaries, officers, landowners and gentry.

[5]Three men were brought to trial for riotous behaviour, and sentenced to jail in Aberdeen for twelve months, with the judge placing blame on the medical profession for its gross negligence in dealing with the disease.

The riots ended relatively abruptly, largely in response to an appeal by the Roman Catholic clergy read from church pulpits, and also published in the local press.

The Liverpool Cholera Riots of 1832 demonstrate the complex social responses to epidemic disease, as well as the fragile interface between the public and the medical profession.

In July 1831, a cholera uprising [sk] of 40,000 peasants broke out in the territory of Upper Hungary (today's eastern Slovakia) in more than 150 villages and small towns.

[9][10] In 1893 fatal riots broke out in Hamburg, Germany during the fifth cholera pandemic, because the public objected to sanitary officers trying to enforce regulations for the prevention of spread of the disease.

In December 2008, baton-wielding riot police broke up protests in Harare and detained dozens, as the death toll of a cholera epidemic neared 600 in Zimbabwe's worsening health and economic crises.

Trade unionists protesting against limits on cash withdrawals were beaten by security forces in Harare, while police also dispersed doctors and nurses who tried to hand in a petition against the collapse of the health system.