During Napoleon 's retreat from Moscow in 1812 , more French soldiers died of typhus than were killed by the Russians . A major epidemic occurred in Ireland between 1816 and 1819 , during the Year Without a Summer ; an estimated 100,000 Irish perished . Typhus appeared again in the late 1830s , and between 1846 and 1849 during the Great Irish Famine . Spreading to England , and called " Irish fever " , it was noted for its virulence . It killed people of all social classes , as lice were endemic and inescapable , but it hit particularly hard in the lower or " unwashed " social strata . In Canada alone , the typhus epidemic of 1847 killed more than 20,000 people from 1847 to 1848 , mainly Irish immigrants in fever sheds and other forms of quarantine , who had contracted the disease aboard coffin ships . In the United States , epidemics occurred in Baltimore , Memphis and Washington DC between 1865 and 1873 , and during the US Civil War
Year Without a Summer
Year Without a Summer
Diseases and epidemics of the 19th century