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
History
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
community. I am sure that if such facilities were offered, there is no
conceivable degradation to which portions of the species might not be
reduced. Allow these tub-men no education, and you would have so many
savages living in the midst of civilization. Wherever there are empty
houses which are not secured, they are soon tenanted by wretched
objects, and these tenants continue so long as there is a harbour for
them. Parish officers and others come to me to aid them in clearing
such places. I tell the police and the parish that there is no use in
their watching these places, that they must board them up if they
would get rid of the occupants. If they will give the accommodation
they will get the occupants. If you will have marshes and stagnant
waters you will there have suitable animals, and the only way of
getting rid of them is by draining the marshes.”
The _Reverend Whitwell Elwin_ observes upon this subject that—
“Those who think that labourers will work for themselves a reform in
their habitations very much underrate the effects of habit. A person
accustomed to fresh air, and all the comforts of civilized life, goes
into a miserable room, dirty, bare, and, above all, sickening from the
smell. Judging from his own sensations, he conceives that nothing but
the most abject poverty could have produced this state of things, and
he can imagine nothing necessary to a cure but a way for escape. A
very simple experiment will correct these erroneous impressions. Let
him remain a short time in the room, and the perception of closeness
will so entirely vanish that he will almost fancy that the atmosphere
has been purified since his entrance. There are few who are not
familiar with this fact; and if such are the effects of an hour in
blunting our refined sensations, and rendering them insensible to
noxious exhalations, what must be the influence of years on the
coarser perceptions of the working-man?
“All who know the lower classes will testify that the last want felt
by the dirty is cleanliness, that their last expenditure is on the
comforts of their home. Two winters ago I found a painter whose bed
was without blankets, whose room was without furniture, who was
destitute even of the ordinary utensils of civilized life, whose floor
was covered with worse filth than that of the streets—I found this man
at dinner with a roast loin of pork stuffed with onions, a Yorkshire
pudding, a large jug of ale, cheese, and a salad. I will undertake to
say that half the gentlemen in Bath did not sit down on that Sunday to
so good a dinner.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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