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
With such an educated class of workmen, the obtainment of a place and
the wages of an adult must be the necessary preliminary to a marriage,
and unless such place or wages were obtained, the young workman would
either remain single or seek employment further a-field. But we will
suppose, for illustration, that a casualty occurs, such as the last
death on the list, J. M., where a young miner who has married and has a
wife and two children is prematurely swept away by an epidemic at 21
years of age, leaving a widow and two destitute orphan children
dependent on poor relations, or on the ratepayers. The first mentioned,
say S. H., then takes the vacant place of work, marries, and is killed
at 34 years of age by “an accident in the mine,” leaving a widow and
seven orphan children. This third vacancy in the place of work is
occupied by another miner H. Y., who marries and works until he is 45,
when he is killed by “consumption,” leaving a widow and five children.
Such casualties do not of course actually so fall on any one place of
work, but the vacancies so created in different places at the younger
periods of life must be and are supplied by new hands coming into the
employment, and marrying as a consequence of that employment, and the
succession will fairly represent 1 he mode in which the vacancies
created by the various causes of death displayed in the last table and
in the other tables of the causes of premature widowhood and orphanage
occur.
In works where the average period of working ability is extended to the
natural period of superannuation, which the evidence shows that a
combination of internal and external sanitary measures maybe expected to
give, namely an average of full 60 years, the account for one place
would be one superannuated workman and one widow, and a family of four
or five well-grown children, who, having received parental care during
that period, will probably all have obtained, before its termination,
the means of independent self-support. Whereas with a population of only
15 or 20 years of working ability, the same place of work may during the
same period have been filled by two generations and one-fourth of
workpeople, not one of which has brought all the children dependent on
it to maturity or a condition for self-support; and the account of
widowhood and orphanage will frequently for the same place of work stand
thus:—
Workmen prematurely Dead. Orphan Children. Years’ loss of Support.
J. M. 1 widow 2 39
S. H. 1 widow 7 26
H. Y. 1 widow 5 15
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