Urban Crisis and Epidemic Typhus in Madrid at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Summary During the nineteenth century, epidemic typhus was one of the main public health problems resulting from industrialisation and urbanisation processes in Europe. It became an illness intricately linked to poverty, famine, the labour crisis and residential overcrowding. In Spain, it reached a significant peak in the first decade of the twentieth century, and Madrid was its uncontested epicentre. Between 1903 and 1910, the Spanish capital was hit by two waves of epidemic typhus. Their causes were associated with the fault lines drawn in the city’s structure during the previous decades. The origins of both epidemics, the resources deployed to control them and their socio-spatial spread can be linked to the gaps in urban policies in Madrid in comparison with the transformations that the city underwent after the middle of the nineteenth century.