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 will be glad to receive from you the name of any
physician or general practitioner of sufficient eminence to obtain the
requisite data, and who will be willing to furnish them with such a
report in each of the towns in your district named in the margin.
4. If the means already indicated should prove insufficient, to obtain a
report from yourself founded on personal examination, on spots where,
from the returns or from other information, such examination by yourself
or the medical officer of the district may appear necessary.
Some of the chief considerations bearing upon the subject are set forth
in the reports referred to in the resolution of the House of Lords, and
if within your district there were any Boards of Health appointed during
the prevalence of the cholera, it is probable that their reports founded
on an examination of the condition of those classes amongst whom the
prevalence of that disease was apprehended may furnish you with useful
information.
The Commissioners wish further to observe that the state of the
dwellings occupied by the labouring classes exercises an important
influence upon their health, and the nature and frequency of the
diseases to which they are subject, as well as indirectly upon the moral
state of themselves and their families.
The Commissioners therefore request you to investigate the state of the
dwellings of the labouring classes in your district, both in towns and
in the country, with reference to the following observations,—
It will be desirable generally, after informing yourself of the various
descriptions of cottage tenements in your district and the nature of the
accommodation or comforts which they contain, to observe—
1. What is the common cost of erection, and the average cost of
repairing each description of these cottage tenements.
2. What are the rents paid by the labourers for each description of
these cottage tenements.
3. What is the general proportion of the rent paid by the labourer to
his total expenditure.
You may find within your district instances where the employers of
labour (whether agricultural or manufacturing) have erected on their own
lands tenements of an improved description for the residence of the
labourers employed by them. You are requested to take notice of all such
instances which may come before you, and examine them as standards of
comparison with other tenements of an inferior kind. You will inquire as
to the comparative health and condition of the inmates, and whether the
advantage of improved dwellings has been observed to have any salutary
influence on the moral habits of the inmates;—whether the increased
comforts of his house and home have tended to withdraw the labourer from
the beer-shop, and from the habits of improvidence to which it
leads;—whether residents in separate and improved tenements are superior
in condition, as compared with the labourers who hold merely lodgings,
or who reside with other families in the same house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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