Soren Kierkegaard

fested with the disease. The next day the Health Commission was con-
vened, and reporting centers were established at various places in the city;
these were to remain open around the clock, reporting on deaths from
the disease. The first deaths were in the old naval district of Nyboder and
neighboring areas in the eastern part of the city. In Adelgade, a densely
populated street, 514 people were infected with the disease, of whom 331
died. But even an aristocratic street like Amaliegade—not far away from
Adelgade—was hard hit. This was not surprising because the entire neigh-
borhood had been built atop old sewage pits, which provided ideal growing
conditions for bacteria.
The mortality rate was highest among those who lived in the back prem-
ises that were tucked away in courtyards, in cellars, or in garrets and lofts.
At the outbreak of the disease, Captain Herforth, the chief administrator of
the General Hospital, took no other measures than to order two hundred
coffins.Beforethecholeraoutbreak,thehospitalhadhousedclosetotwelve
hundred patients, crammed together under truly dreadful circumstances. It
took two weeks for the disease to find its way into the hospital, but when
it did, it found nearly perfect conditions. In the course of only five weeks,
538 people died. No one had any idea of what to do with all the corpses,
and it was necessary to apply to the Ministry of War to borrow tents, which
were set up in the cemeteries and served as temporary morgues. Special
shelters for corpses were set up on the potter’s field at Assistens Cemetery
and at the cemetery just outside Amagerport. Under normal circumstances,
a corpse was to be transported in a hearse from the home of the deceased
to the cemetery. After the plague of 1711, a group of university students
residing at Regensen College had been granted a monopoly on this work,
but under the extreme circumstances of the 1853 cholera epidemic, these
“corpse bearers” could not keep up. In a letter dated August 7, 1853, Hans
Brøchner provided the following sketch of the primitive and macabre
scenes unfolding before his eyes as he strolled about in Copenhagen: “At
every hour of the day, from the earliest morning until late in the evening,
when I walked toward the city I could see funeral processions, and on the
short walk to the gate [Nørreport] (I live just beyond the lakes) I would
encounter three different processions. People have used the most amazingly
varied means of transport: old, rickety hearses, commercial wagons, farm
carts, buses, and furniture wagons—though I have not seen the wheelbar-
rows mentioned in theKjøbenhavnsposten. At the cemetery, matters are han-
dled with a minimum of ceremony. One day I saw the corpse bus come
out there with six coffins. One of the grave diggers opened it and crawled
in behind the coffins, which he shoved out as though they were freight,
and the other fellows took hold of them, uttering all sorts of cheerful re-