2-970-216 - /Heritage Images

The Inundation at Lyons, 1856. Flooding in France. '...upwards of 10,000 men, women, and children are by this catastrophe thrown out of work, and not only so, but they are without house or home, and too probably without bread...A number of bridges have been carried away, and the railway has been intercepted at various points...One house, two stories high, and built apparently with great solidity, was thrown down, and six persons who were in it at the time perished...The Lyons journals of Saturday state that since the previous evening rain had fallen heavily, but the Saone [river] had not risen, and that the water continued to recede from the inundated parts, in consequence of the trenches which had been cut by the water company having been opened'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.