Born Then
1899–1923

Life during the Sixth cholera pandemic

Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.

What it meant for ordinary people

By 1900 Western Europe and North America had mostly stopped cholera with clean water and sewers. It kept killing in India, the Philippines, Russia and the Ottoman lands, where poor districts still drew water from rivers and open wells.

Deaths: more than 800,000 in India; about 200,000 in the Philippines in 1902–04.

How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.

Around the same time