Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices — John Shaqi
Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With AppendicesChadwick, Edwin
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Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices
Chadwick, Edwin
Housing -- Great Britain; Public health -- Great Britain
The Commissioners trust, therefore, they may rely with confidence on
your affording them your valuable assistance in the inquiry which they
are directed to pursue. They trust you will permit them to suggest that
if the cases recorded in the books of your hospital were grouped
according to the districts from which the patients were removed, you
would at once be able to define in a map those parts of your town most
subject to contagious febrile diseases, and to furnish the Commissioners
with the number of cases of each febrile disease occurring in each of
these districts, and would possess the means of ascertaining and
delineating the features of those districts in all that relates to the
sanitary condition of the inhabitants, and to medical police. Besides
the general influences alluded to in the former part of this letter, you
will probably find it useful to ascertain whether any injurious
consequences are clearly attributable to certain classes of
manufactories surrounded by the habitations of the poor, to the location
of slaughter-houses, tanneries, ancient burial grounds, &c., amidst
dense masses of the population.
In the course of this inquiry it may be found necessary to distinguish
the extent of disease caused by physical or removable agencies, by
malaria created by defective drainage, or the bad construction of the
dwellings of the labouring classes, from disease caused by destitution
of the proper means of subsistence arising from poverty. It may be
expected of the medical practitioners from whom the Commissioners hope
to obtain reports, that they will make the distinction wherever it is
found to exist.
The Commissioners will value any suggestions you may have to offer
respecting the removal of the injurious agencies which may fall under
your observation. You are probably well acquainted with the nature of
the powers confided to the municipal authorities or other local bodies
respecting the paving, sewerage, and drainage of the town, and
especially of those parts of it which are inhabited chiefly or solely by
the working classes. The Commissioners request you to observe whether
those powers enable the municipal or other local body to complete the
sewerage, and to enforce the paving and drainage of the streets
partially or wholly at the expense of the proprietors of these houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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