HEALTHY HOMES.
"The best security for civilization is the dwelling. "--_B. Disraeli_.
"Cleanliness is the elegance of the poor."--_English Proverb_.
"Sanitas sanitatum, et omnia sanitas."--_Julius Menochius_.
"Virtue never dwelt long with filth and nastiness."--_Count Rumford_.
"More servants wait on Man
Than he'll take notice of: in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan."--_George Herbert_.
Health is said to be wealth. Indeed, all wealth is valueless without
health. Every man who lives by labour, whether of mind or body, regards
health as one of the most valuable of possessions. Without it, life
would be unenjoyable. The human system has been so framed as to render
enjoyment one of the principal ends of physical life. The whole
arrangement, structure, and functions of the human system are
beautifully adapted for that purpose.
The exercise of every sense is pleasurable,--the exercise of sight,
hearing, taste, touch, and muscular effort. What can be more
pleasurable, for instance, than the feeling of entire health,--health,
which is the sum-total of the functions of life, duly performed?
"Enjoyment," says Dr. Southwood Smith, "is not only the end of life, but
it is the only condition of life which is compatible with a protracted
term of existence. The happier a human being is, the longer he lives;
the more he suffers, the sooner he dies. To add to enjoyment, is to
lengthen life; to inflict pain, is to shorten its duration."
Happiness is the rule of healthy existence; pain and misery are its
exceptional conditions. Nor is pain altogether an evil; it is rather a
salutary warning. It tells us that we have transgressed some rule,
violated some law, disobeyed some physical obligation. It is a monitor
which warns us to amend our state of living. It virtually says,--Return
to nature, observe her laws, and be restored to happiness. Thus,
paradoxical though it may seem, pain is one of the conditions of the
physical well-being of man; as death, according to Dr. Thomas Brown, is
one of the conditions of the enjoyment of life.
To enjoy physical happiness, therefore, the natural laws must be
complied with. To discover and observe these laws, man has been endowed
with the gift of reason. Does he fail to exercise this gift,--does he
neglect to comply with the law of his being,--then pain and disease are
the necessary consequence.
Man violates the laws of nature in his own person, and he suffers
accordingly. He is idle and overfeeds himself: he is punished by gout,
indigestion, or apoplexy. He drinks too much: he becomes bloated,
trembling, and weak; his appetite falls off, his strength declines, his
constitution decays; and he falls a victim to the numerous diseases
which haunt the steps of the drunkard.
Society suffers in the same way. It leaves districts undrained, and
streets uncleaned. Masses of the population are allowed to live crowded
together in unwholesome dens, half poisoned by the mephitic air of the
neighbourhood. Then a fever breaks out,--or a cholera, or a plague.
Disease spreads from the miserable abodes of the poor into the
comfortable homes of the rich, carrying death and devastation before it.
The misery and suffering incurred in such cases, are nothing less than
wilful, inasmuch as the knowledge necessary to avert them is within the
reach of all.
Wherever any number of persons live together, the atmosphere becomes
poisoned, unless means be provided for its constant change and
renovation. If there be not sufficient ventilation, the air becomes
charged with carbonic acid, principally the product of respiration.
Whatever the body discharges, becomes poison to the body if introduced
again through the lungs. Hence the immense importance of pure air. A
deficiency of food may be considerably less injurious than a deficiency
of pure air. Every person above fourteen years of age requires about six
hundred cubic feet of shut-up space to breathe in during the twenty-four
hours.[1] If he sleeps in a room of smaller dimensions, he will suffer
more or less, and gradually approach the condition of being smothered.
[Footnote 1: Where six hundred cubic feet of space is allowed, the air
requires to be changed, by ventilation, five times in the hour, in order
to keep it pure. The best amount of space to be allowed for a healthy
adult is about eight hundred cubic feet. The air which is breathed
becomes so rapidly impure, that a constant supply of fresh air must be
kept up to make the air of the shut-up space fit for breathing. The
following are some amounts of space per head which are met with in
practice:--
Artizan rooms 200 cubic feet.
Metropolitan Lodging
Houses 240 "
Poor Law Board Dormitories 300 "
Barrack Regulation 60 "
The best Hospitals 1,500 to 2,000
cubic feet.]
Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by
rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he
will die in the same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole
of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children
born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old,
principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who
was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him
out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived,
and eventually got well. He was cured by the pure air.
The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is
fever. The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the
_fever tax_. It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand
persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die.
Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who
generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence
deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very
heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr.
Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that
the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from
_preventible_ disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than
five millions sterling annually. But this is only the physical and
pecuniary loss. The moral loss is infinitely greater.
Where are now the "happy humble swains" and the "gentle shepherds" of
the old English poets? At the present time, they are nowhere to be
found. The modern Strephon and Phyllis are a very humble pair, living in
a clay-floored cottage, and maintaining a family on from twelve to
fifteen shillings a week. And so far from Strephon spending his time in
sitting by a purling stream playing "roundelays" upon a pipe,--poor
fellow! he can scarcely afford to smoke one, his hours of labour are so
long, and his wages are so small. As for Daphnis, he is a lout, and can
neither read nor write; nor is his Chloe any better.
Phineas Fletcher thus sang of "The Shepherd's Home:"--
"Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state!
When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate.
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep:
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.'
Where, oh where, has this gentle shepherd gone? Have spinning-jennies
swallowed him up? Alas! as was observed of Mrs. Harris, "there's no such
a person." Did he _ever_ exist? We have a strong suspicion that he never
did, save in the imaginations of poets.
Before the age of railroads and sanitary reformers, the pastoral life of
the Arcadians was a beautiful myth, The Blue Book men have exploded it
for ever. The agricultural labourers have not decent houses,--only
miserable huts, to live in. They have but few provisions for cleanliness
or decency. Two rooms for sleeping and living in, are all that the
largest family can afford. Sometimes they have only one. The day-room,
in addition to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the washing
apparatus, agricultural implements, and dirty clothes. In the sleeping
apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are
indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeps in the same and
only room, which has generally no window,--the openings in the
half-thatched roof admitting light, and exposing the family to every
vicissitude of the weather. The husband, having no comfort at home,
seeks it in the beershop. The children grow up without decency or
self-restraint. As for the half-hearted wives and daughters, their lot
is very miserable.
It is not often that village affairs are made the subject of discussion
in newspapers, for the power of the press has not yet reached remote
country places. But we do hear occasionally of whole villages being
pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them "becoming nests of
beggars' brats." A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess
before a Parliamentary Committee, that he "had pulled down between
twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing,
would have been inhabited by young married couples." And what becomes of
the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left
standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the
workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there
is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.
Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not
sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers
regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the
rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of
manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks
volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their
country's pride."
The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par
with their physical state. Those in the western counties are as little
civilized as the poor people in the east of London. A report of the
Diocesan Board of the county of Hereford states that "a great deal of
the superstition of past ages lingers in our parishes. The observation
of lucky and unlucky days and seasons is by no means unusual; the phases
of the moon are regarded with great respect,--in one, medicine may be
taken, in another it is advisable to kill a pig; over the doors of many
houses may be found twigs placed crosswise, and never suffered to lose
their cruciform position; and the horseshoe preserves its old station on
many a stable-door. Charms are devoutly believed in; a ring made from a
shilling, offered at the communion, is an undoubted cure for fits; hair
plucked from the crop on an ass's shoulder, and woven into a chain, to
be put round a child's neck, is powerful for the same purpose; and the
hand of a corpse applied to the neck is believed to disperse a wen. The
'evil eye,' so long dreaded in uneducated countries, has its terrors
among us; and if a person of ill life be suddenly called away, there are
generally some who hear his 'tokens,' or see his ghost. There exists,
besides, the custom of communicating deaths to hives of bees, in the
belief that they invariably abandon their owners if the intelligence be
withheld."
Sydney Smith has said, with more truth than elegance, that in the
infancy of all nations, even the most civilized, men lived the life of
pigs; and if sanitary reporters had existed in times past as they do
now, we should doubtless have received an account of the actual
existence and domestic accommodation of the old English "swains" and
"shepherds," very different from that given by Phineas Fletcher. Even
the mechanics of this day are more comfortably lodged than the great
landed gentry of the Saxon and Norman periods: and if the truth could be
got at, it would be found that, bad as is the state of our agricultural
labourers now, the condition of their forefathers was no better.
The first method of raising a man above the life of an animal is to
provide him with a healthy home. The Home is after all the best school
for the world. Children grow up into men and women there; they imbibe
their best and their worst morality there; and their morals and
intelligence are in a great measure well or ill trained there. Men can
only be really and truly humanized and civilized through the institution
of the Home. There is domestic purity and moral life in the good home;
and individual defilement and moral death in the bad one. The
schoolmaster has really very little to do with the formation of the
characters of children. These are formed in the home, by the father and
mother,--by brothers, sisters, and companions. It does not matter how
complete may be the education given in schools. It may include the whole
range of knowledge: yet if the scholar is under the necessity of daily
returning to a home which is indecent, vicious, and miserable, all this
learning will prove of comparatively little value. Character and
disposition are the result of home training; and if these are, through
bad physical and moral conditions, deteriorated and destroyed, the
intellectual culture acquired in the school may prove an instrumentality
for evil rather than for good.
The home should not be considered merely as an eating and sleeping
place; but as a place where self-respect may be preserved, and comfort
secured, and domestic pleasures enjoyed. Three-fourths of the petty
vices which degrade society, and swell into crimes which disgrace it,
would shrink before the influence of self-respect. To be a place of
happiness, exercising beneficial influences upon its members,--and
especially upon the children growing up within it,--the home must be
pervaded by the spirit of comfort, cleanliness, affection, and
intelligence. And in order to secure this, the presence of a
well-ordered, industrious, and educated woman is indispensable. So much
depends upon the woman, that we might almost pronounce the happiness or
unhappiness of the home to be woman's work. No nation can advance except
through the improvement of the nation's homes; and these can only be
improved through the instrumentality of women. They must _know_ how to
make homes comfortable; and before they can know, they must have been
taught.
Women must, therefore, have sufficient training to fit them for their
duties in real life. Their education should be conducted throughout,
with a view to their future position as wives, mothers, and housewives.
But amongst all classes, even the highest, the education of girls is
rarely conducted with this object. Amongst the working people, the girls
are sent out to work; amongst the higher classes, they are sent out to
learn a few flashy accomplishments; and men are left to pick from them,
very often with little judgment, the future wives and mothers of
England.
Men themselves attach little or no importance to the intelligence or
industrial skill of women; and they only discover their value when they
find their homes stupid and cheerless. Men are caught by the glance of a
bright eye, by a pair of cherry cheeks, by a handsome figure; and when
they "fall in love," as the phrase goes, they never bethink them of
whether the "loved one" can mend a shirt or cook a pudding. And yet the
most sentimental of husbands must come down from his "ecstatics" so soon
as the knot is tied; and then he soon enough finds out that the clever
hands of a woman are worth far more than her bright glances; and if the
shirt and pudding qualifications be absent, then woe to the unhappy man,
and woe also to the unhappy woman! If the substantial element of
physical comfort be absent from the home, it soon becomes hateful; the
wife, notwithstanding all her good looks, is neglected; and the
public-house separates those whom the law and the Church have joined
together.
Men are really desperately ignorant respecting the home department. If
they thought for a moment of its importance, they would not be so ready
to rush into premature housekeeping. Ignorant men select equally
ignorant women for their wives; and these introduce into the world
families of children, whom they are utterly incompetent to train as
rational or domestic beings. The home is no home, but a mere lodging,
and often a very comfortless one.
We speak not merely of the poorest labourers, but of the best-paid
workmen in the large manufacturing towns. Men earning from two to three
pounds a week,--or more than the average pay of curates and bankers'
clerks,--though spending considerable amounts on beer, will often grudge
so small a part of their income as half-a-crown a week to provide decent
homes for themselves and their children. What is the consequence? They
degrade themselves and their families. They crowd together, in foul
neighbourhoods, into dwellings possessing no element of health or
decency; where even the small rental which they pay is in excess of the
accommodation they receive. The results are inevitable,--loss of
self-respect, degradation of intelligence, failure of physical health,
and premature death. Even the highest-minded philosopher, placed in such
a situation, would gradually gravitate towards brutality.
But the amount thus saved, or rather not expended on house-rent, is not
economy; it is reckless waste. The sickness caused by the bad dwelling
involves frequent interruptions of work, and drains upon the Savings
Bank or the Benefit Society; and a final and rapid descent to the
poor-rates. Though the loss to the middle and upper classes is great,
the loss is not for a moment to be compared with that which falls upon
the working classes themselves, through their neglect in providing
wholesome and comfortable dwellings for their families. It is, perhaps,
not saying too much to aver, that one-half the money expended by benefit
societies in large towns, may be set down as pecuniary loss arising from
bad and unhealthy homes.
But there is a worse consequence still. The low tone of physical health
thereby produced is one of the chief causes of drunkenness. Mr. Chadwick
once remonstrated with an apparently sensible workman on the expenditure
of half his income on whisky. His reply was, "Do you, sir, come and live
here, and you will drink whisky too." Mr. Leigh says, "I would not be
understood that habits of intoxication are _wholly_ due to a defective
sanitary condition; but no person can have the experience I have had
without coming to the conclusion that _unhealthy_ and unhappy
homes,--loss of _vital_ and consequently of _industrial_ energy, and a
consciousness of inability to control external circumstances,--induce
thousands to escape from miserable depression in the temporary
excitement of noxious drugs and intoxicating liquors. They are like the
seamen who struggle for awhile against the evils by which they are
surrounded, but at last, seeing no hope, stupefy themselves with drink,
and perish."
It may be said, in excuse, that working people must necessarily occupy
such houses as are to be had, and pay the rental asked for them, bad and
unwholesome though they be. But there is such a thing as supply and
demand; and the dwellings now supplied are really those which are most
in demand, because of their lowness of rental. Were the working classes
to shun unwholesome districts, and low-priced dwellings, and rent only
such tenements as were calculated to fulfil the requirements of a
wholesome and cleanly home, the owners of property would be compelled to
improve the character of their houses, and raise them to the required
standard of comfort and accommodation. The real remedy must lie with the
working classes themselves. Let them determine to raise their standard
of rental, and the reform is in a great measure accomplished.
We have already shown how masters have done a great deal for the better
accommodation of their work-people--how the benefactors of the poor,
such as Mr. Peabody and Lady Burdett Coutts, have promoted the building
of healthy homes. Yet the result must depend upon the individual action
of the working classes themselves. When they have the choice of living
in a dwelling situated in a healthy locality, and of another situated in
an unhealthy locality, they ought to choose the former. But very often
they do not. There is perhaps a difference of sixpence a week in the
rental, and, not knowing the advantages of health, they take the
unhealthy dwelling because it is the cheapest. But the money that sickly
people have to pay for physic, doctors' bills, and loss of wages, far
more than exceeds the amount saved by cheaper rental,--not to speak of
the loss of comfort, the want of cleanliness, and the depression of
spirits, which is inevitable where foul air is breathed.
To build a wholesome dwelling costs little more than to build an
unwholesome one. What is wanted on the part of the builder is, a
knowledge of sanitary conditions, and a willingness to provide the
proper accommodation. The space of ground covered by the dwelling is the
same in both cases; the quantity of bricks and mortar need be no
greater; and pure air is of the same price as foul air. Light costs
nothing.
A healthy home, presided over by a thrifty, cleanly woman, may be the
abode of comfort, of virtue, and of happiness. It may be the scene of
every ennobling relation in family life. It may be endeared to a man by
many delightful memories, by the affectionate voices of his wife, his
children, and his neighbours. Such a Home will be regarded, not as a
mere nest of common instinct, but as a training-ground for young
immortals, a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from storms, a sweet
resting-place after labour, a consolation in sorrow, a pride in success,
and a joy at all times.
Much has been done to spread the doctrines of Sanitary Science. There is
no mystery attached to it, otherwise we should have had professors
teaching it in colleges (as we have now), and graduates practising it
amongst the people. It is only of recent years that it has received
general recognition; and we owe it, not to the medical faculty, but to a
barrister, that it has become embodied in many important Acts of
Parliament.
Edwin Chadwick has not yet received ordinary justice from his
contemporaries. Though he has been one of the most indefatigable and
successful workers of the age, and has greatly influenced the
legislation of his time, he is probably less known than many a
fourth-rate parliamentary talker.
Mr. Chadwick belongs to a Lancashire family, and was born near
Manchester. He received his education chiefly in London. Having chosen
the law for his profession, he was enrolled a student of the Inner
Temple in his twenty-sixth year. There he "ate his way" to the Bar;
maintaining himself by reporting and writing for the daily press. He was
not a man of an extraordinary amount of learning. But he was a sagacious
and persevering man. He was ready to confront any amount of labour in
prosecuting an object, no matter how remote its attainment might at
first sight appear to be.
At an early period in his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed by an
idea. It is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea,
provided its aim and end be beneficent. It gives a colour and bias to
the whole of a man's life. The idea was not a new one; but being taken
up by an earnest, energetic, and hard-working man, there was some hope
for the practical working out of his idea in the actual life of
humanity. It was neither more nor less than the Sanitary Idea,--the germ
of the sanitary movement.
We must now briefly state how he worked his way to its practical
realization. It appears that Mr. Morgan, the Government actuary, had
stated before a parliamentary committee, that though the circumstances
of the middle classes had improved, their "expectation of life" had not
lengthened. This being diametrically opposed to our student's idea, he
endeavoured to demonstrate the fallacy of the actuary's opinion. He read
up and sifted numerous statistical documents,--Blue Books, life-tables,
and population-tables. He bored his way through the cumbrous pile, and
brought an accumulation of facts from the most unlooked-for quarters,
for the purpose of illustrating his idea, and elucidating his
master-thought.
The result was published in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1828.
Mr. Chadwick demonstrated, by an immense array of facts and arguments,
that the circumstances which surround human beings _must_ have an
influence upon their health; that health _must_ improve with an
improvement of these circumstances; that many of the diseases and
conditions unfavourable to human life were under man's control, and
capable of being removed; that the practice of vaccination, the
diminution of hard drinking amongst the middle and upper classes, the
increase of habits of cleanliness, the improvements in medical science,
and the better construction of streets and houses, _must_, according to
all medical and popular experience, have contributed, _à priori_, to
lengthen life; and these he proved by a citation of facts from numerous
authentic sources. In short, Mr. Morgan was wrong. The "expectancy of
life," as is now universally admitted, has improved and is rapidly
improving amongst the better classes; but it was never thoroughly
demonstrated until Edwin Chadwick undertook the discussion of the
question.
Another article, which Mr. Chadwick published in the _London Review_, in
1829, on "Preventive Police," was read by Jeremy Bentham, then in his
eighty-second year, who so much admired it, that he craved an
introduction to the writer. The consequence was the formation of a
friendship that lasted without interruption until the death of the
philosopher in 1832. Mr. Bentham wished to engage the whole of his young
friend's time in assisting him with the preparation of his
Administrative Code, and he offered to place him in independent
circumstances if he would devote himself exclusively to the advancement
of his views. The offer was, however, declined.
Mr. Chadwick completed his law studies, and was called to the bar in
November, 1830. He was preparing to enter upon the practice of common
law, occasionally contributing articles to the _Westminster_, when he
was, in 1832, appointed a commissioner, in conjunction with Dr.
Southwood Smith and Mr. Tooke, to investigate the question of Factory
Labour, which Lord Ashley and Mr. Sadler were at that time strongly
pressing upon public attention. The sanitary idea again found
opportunity for expression in the report of the commission, which
referred to "defective drainage, ventilation, water supply, and the
like, as causes of disease,--acting, concurrently with excessive toil,
to depress the health and shorten the lives of the factory population."
In the same year (1832) an important Commission of Inquiry was appointed
by Lord Grey's Government, in reference to the operation of the Poor
Laws in England and Wales. Mr. Chadwick was appointed one of the
assistant commissioners, for the purpose of taking evidence on the
subject; and the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him.
His report, published in the following year, was a model of what a
report should be. It was full of information, admirably classified and
arranged, and was so racy,--by virtue of the facts brought to light, and
the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were
spoken,--that the report may be read with interest by the most
inveterate enemy of blue-books.
Mr. Chadwick showed himself so thoroughly a master of the subject,--his
suggestions were so full of practical value,--that he was, shortly after
the publication of the report, advanced from the post of assistant
commissioner to that of chief commissioner: and he largely shared, with
Mr. Senior, in the labours and honours of the commissioners' report
submitted to the House of Commons in 1834, and also in the famous
Poor-Law Amendment Act passed in the same year, in which the
recommendations of the commissioners were substantially adopted and
formalized.
One may venture to say now, without fear of contradiction, that that law
was one of the most valuable that has been placed on the statute-book in
modern times. And yet no law proved more unpopular than this was, for
years after it had been enacted. But Mr. Chadwick never ceased to have
perfect faith in the soundness of the principles on which it was based,
and he was indefatigable in defending and establishing it. It has been
well said, that "to become popular is an easy thing; but to do unpopular
justice,--that requires a Man." And Edwin Chadwick is the man who has
never failed in courage to do the right thing, even though it should
prove to be the unpopular thing.
Whilst burrowing amidst the voluminous evidence on the Poor Laws, Mr.
Chadwick never lost sight of his sanitary idea. All his reports were
strongly imbued with it. One-fourth of the then existing pauperism was
traced by him to the preventible causes of disease. His minute
investigations into the condition of the labouring population and of the
poorer classes generally, gave him a thorough acquaintance with the
physical evils that were preying upon the community, carrying them off
by fevers, consumption, and cholera; and the sanitary idea took still
firmer possession of his mind.
One day, in 1838, while engaged in his official vocation of Secretary to
the Poor-Law Commission, an officer of the Whitechapel Union hastily
entered the Board-room of the Poor-Law Commission, and, with a troubled
countenance, informed the secretary that a terrible fever had broken out
round a stagnant pool in Whitechapel; that the people were dying by
scores; and that the extreme malignity of the cases gave reason to
apprehend that the disease was allied to Asiatic cholera. On hearing
this, the Board, at Mr. Chadwick's instance, immediately appointed Drs.
Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith to investigate the causes of this
alarming mortality, and to report generally upon the sanitary condition
of London. This inquiry at length ripened into the sanitary inquiry.
In the meantime, Mr. Chadwick had been engaged as a member of the
Commission, to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient
constabulary force in England and Wales. The evidence was embodied in a
report, as interesting as a novel of Dickens, which afforded a curious
insight into the modes of living, the customs and habits, of the lowest
classes of the population. When this question had been dismissed, Mr.
Chadwick proceeded to devote himself almost exclusively to the great
work of his life,--the Sanitary Movement.
The Bishop of London, in 1839, moved in the Lords, that the inquiry
which had been made at Mr. Chadwick's instance by Drs. Southwood Smith,
Arnott, and Kay, into the sanitary state of the metropolis, should be
extended to the whole population, city, rural, and manufacturing, of
England and Wales. Some residents in Edinburgh also petitioned that
Scotland might be included; and accordingly, in August, 1839, Lord John
Russell addressed a letter to the Poor-Law Board, authorizing them by
royal command to extend to the whole of Great Britain the inquiry into
preventible disease, which had already been begun with regard to the
metropolis. The onerous task of setting on foot and superintending the
inquiry throughout,--of sifting the evidence, and classifying and
condensing it for the purposes of publication,--devolved upon Mr.
Chadwick.
The first Report on the Health of Towns was ready for publication in
1842. It _ought_ to have appeared as the Official Report of the Poor-Law
Board; but as the commissioners (some of whom were at variance with Mr.
Chadwick with respect to the New Poor-Law) refused to assume the
responsibility of a document that contained much that must necessarily
offend many influential public bodies, Mr. Chadwick took the
responsibility upon himself, and it was published as _his_
report,--which indeed it was,--and accepted from him as such by the
commissioners.
The amount of dry, hard work encountered by Mr. Chadwick in the
preparation of this and his other reports can scarcely be estimated,
except by those who know anything of the labour involved in extracting
from masses of evidence, written and printed, sent in from all parts of
the empire, only the most striking results bearing upon the question in
hand, and such as are deemed worthy of publication. The mountains of
paper which Mr. Chadwick has thus bored through in his lifetime must
have been immense; and could they now be presented before him in one
pile, they would appal even _his_ stout heart!
The sensation excited throughout the country by the publication of Mr.
Chadwick's Sanitary Report was immense. Such a revelation of the horrors
lying concealed beneath the fair surface of our modern civilization, had
never before been published. But Mr. Chadwick had no idea of merely
creating a sensation. He had an object in view, which he persistently
pursued. The report was nothing, unless its recommendations were
speedily carried into effect. A sanitary party was formed; and the
ministers for the time being, aided by members of both sides in
politics, became its influential leaders.
A Sanitary Commission was appointed in 1844, to consider the whole
question in its practical bearings. The Commission published two
reports, with a view to legislation, but the Free-Trade struggle
interfered, and little was done for several years. Meanwhile our
sanitary reformer was occupied as a Commissioner in inquiring into the
condition of the metropolis. The Commission published three reports, in
which the defective drainage, sewage, and water-supply of London were
discussed in detail; and these have recently been followed by important
acts of legislation.
The sanitary idea at length had its triumph in the enactment of the
Public Health Act of 1848, and the appointment of a General Board of
Health (of which Mr. Chadwick was a member) to superintend its
administration. Numerous supplemental measures have since been enacted,
with the view of carrying into practical effect the sanitary principles
adopted by the Board. Reports continued to be published, from time to
time, full of valuable information: for instance, in reference to the
application of Sewage water to agricultural purposes; on Epidemic
Cholera; on Quarantine; on Drainage; on Public Lodging-houses; and the
like. The sanitary movement, in short, became a "great fact;" and that
it is so, we have mainly to thank Edwin Chadwick--the missionary of the
Sanitary idea. It is true he was eventually dismissed from his position
of influence at the Board of Health,--partly through spleen, but chiefly
because of his own unaccommodating nature,--unaccommodating especially
to petty local authorities and individual interests opposed to the
public good. But with all thinking and impartial men, his character
stands as high as it ever did. At all events, his _works_ remain.
We do not know a more striking instance than that presented by this
gentleman's career, of the large amount of good which a man strongly
possessed by a beneficent idea can accomplish, provided he have only the
force of purpose and perseverance to follow it up. Though Mr. Chadwick
has not been an actual legislator, he has nevertheless been the mover of
more wise measures than any legislator of our time. He created a public
opinion in favour of sanitary reform. He has also impressed the minds of
benevolent individuals with the necessity for providing improved
dwellings for the people; and has thus been the indirect means of
establishing the Peabody Dwellings, the Baroness Coutts' Dwellings, and
the various Societies for erecting improved dwellings for the industrial
classes.
Edwin Chadwick has thus proved himself to be one of the most useful and
practical of public benefactors. He deserves to be ranked with Clarkson
or Howard. His labours have been equally salutary; some will say that
they have been much more so in their results.
Sanitary science may be summed up in the one word--Cleanliness. Pure
water and pure air are its essentials. Wherever there is impurity, it
must be washed away and got rid of. Thus sanitary science is one of the
simplest and most intelligible of all the branches of human knowledge.
Perhaps it is because of this, that, like most common things, it has
continued to receive so little attention. Many still think that it
requires no science at all to ventilate a chamber, to clean out a drain,
and to keep house and person free from uncleanness.
Sanitary science may be regarded as an unsavoury subject. It deals with
dirt and its expulsion--from the skin, from the house, from the street,
from the city. It is comprised in the words--wherever there is dirt, get
rid of it instantly; and with cleanliness let there be a copious supply
of pure water and of pure air for the purposes of human health.
Take, for instance, an unhealthy street, or block of streets, in a large
town. There you find typhus fever constantly present. Cleanse and sewer
the street; supply it with pure air and pure water, and fever is
forthwith banished. Is not this a much more satisfactory result than the
application of drugs? Fifty thousand persons, says Mr. Lee, annually
fall victims to typhus fever in Great Britain, originated by causes
which are preventible. The result is the same as if these fifty thousand
persons were annually taken out of their wretched dwellings, and put to
death! We are shocked by the news of a murder--by the loss of a single
life by physical causes! And yet we hear, almost without a shudder, the
reiterated statement of the loss of tens of thousands of lives yearly
from physical causes in daily operation. The annual slaughter from
preventible causes of typhus fever is double the amount of what was
suffered by the allied armies at the battle of Waterloo! By neglect of
the ascertained conditions of healthful living, the great mass of the
people lose nearly half the natural period of their lives. "Typhus,"
says a medical officer, "is a curse which man inflicts upon himself by
the neglect of sanitary arrangements."
Mr. Chadwick affirmed that in the cellars of Liverpool, Manchester, and
Leeds, he had seen amongst the operatives more vice, misery, and
degradation than those which, when detailed by Howard, had excited the
sympathy of the world. The Irish poor sink into the unhealthy closes,
lanes, and back streets of large towns; and so frequent are the attacks
of typhus among them, that in some parts of the country the disease is
known as "the Irish fever." It is not merely the loss of life that is so
frightful; there is also the moral death that is still more appalling in
these unhealthy localities. Vice and crime consort with foul living. In
these places, demoralization is the normal state. There is an absence of
cleanliness, of decency, of decorum; the language used is polluting, and
scenes of profligacy are of almost hourly occurrence,--all tending to
foster idleness, drunkenness, and vicious abandonment. Imagine such a
moral atmosphere for women and children!
The connection is close and intimate between physical and moral health,
between domestic well-being and public happiness. The destructive
influence of an unwholesome dwelling propagates a moral typhus worse
than the plague itself. Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing
influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of
necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a
stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character
becomes depraved; and too often--eager to snatch even a momentary
enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,--the miserable
victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery,
infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness.
This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly
thing. It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of
poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children
made fatherless, by typhus. It costs them also a great deal in disease;
for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the
homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children. It
costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries,
infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the destitute. It costs
the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only
capital. In this is invested their all: if they lose it, their docket is
struck, and they are bankrupt. How frightful is the neglect, whether it
be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of
his health, and makes his life a daily death!
Why, then, is not sanitary science universally adopted and enforced? We
fear it is mainly through indifference and laziness. The local
authorities--municipalities and boards of guardians--are so many Mrs.
Maclartys in their way. Like that dirty matron, they "canna be fashed."
To remove the materials of disease requires industry, constant
attention, and--what is far more serious--increased rates. The foul
interests hold their ground, and bid defiance to the attacks made upon
them. Things did very well, they say, in "the good old times,"--why
should they not do so now? When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell
us that Nobody is to blame.
That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is
done by Nobody than by all the world besides. Nobody adulterates our
food. Nobody poisons us with bad drink. Nobody supplies us with foul
water. Nobody spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes. Nobody
leaves towns undrained. Nobody fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict
stations. Nobody makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards.
Nobody has a theory too--a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two
words--_Laissez faire_--Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster
of Paris mixed with flour, "Let alone" is the remedy. When _Cocculus
indicus_ is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to
say, "Nobody did it." Let those who can, find out when they are cheated:
_Caveat emptor_. When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone. Let
wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.
"It matters nothing to me," said a rich man who heard of a poor woman
and her sick child being driven forth from a town for begging. The
workhouse authorities would have nothing to do with her, and sent her
away. But the poor woman went and sat down with her child at the rich
man's door; the child died there; the contagion of typhus was wafted
into the gilded saloon and the luxurious bed-chamber and the rich man's
child fell a victim to the disease.
But Nobody has considerably less power in society than he once had: and
our hope is, that he may ultimately follow in the wake of Old Bogie, and
disappear altogether. Wherever there is suffering and social depression,
we may depend upon it that Somebody is to blame. The responsibility
rests somewhere; and if we allow it to remain, it rests with us. We may
not be able to cope with the evil as individuals, single-handed; but it
becomes us to unite, and bring to bear upon the evil the joint moral
power of society in the form of a law. A Law is but the expression of a
combined will; and it does that for society, which society, in its
individual and separate action, cannot so well or efficiently do for
itself. Laws may do too much; they may meddle with things which ought to
be "let alone;" but the abuse of a thing is no proper argument against
its use, in cases where its employment is urgently called for.
Mere improvement of towns, however,--as respects drainage, sewerage,
paving, water supply, and abolition of cellar dwellings,--will effect
comparatively little, unless we can succeed in carrying the improvement
further,--namely, into the Homes of the people themselves. A
well-devised system of sanitary measures may ensure external
cleanliness,--may provide that the soil on which the streets of houses
are built shall be relieved of all superfluous moisture, and that all
animal and vegetable refuse shall be promptly removed,--so that the air
circulating through the streets, and floating from them into the houses
of the inhabitants, shall not be laden with poisonous miasmata, the
source of disease, suffering, and untimely death. Cellar dwellings may
be prohibited, and certain regulations as to the buildings hereafter to
be erected may also be enforced. But here municipal or parochial
authority stops: it can go no further; it cannot penetrate into the
Home, and it is not necessary that it should do so.
The individual efforts of the community themselves are therefore needed;
and any legislative enactments which dispensed with these would probably
be an evil. The Government does not build the houses in which the people
dwell. These are provided by employers and by capitalists, small and
large. It is necessary, therefore, to enlist these interests in the
cause of sanitary improvement, in order to ensure success.
Individual capitalists have already done much to provide wholesome
houses for their working people, and have found their account in so
doing, by their increased health, as well as in their moral improvement
in all ways. Capitalists imbued with a benevolent and philanthropic
spirit can thus spread blessings far and wide. And were a few
enterprising builders in every town to take up this question
practically, and provide a class of houses for workpeople, with suitable
accommodation; provided with arrangements for ventilation, cleanliness,
and separation of the sexes, such as health and comfort require; they
would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at
large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it
would not be easy to overestimate.
But there also needs the active co-operation of the dwellers in poor
men's homes themselves. They, too, must join cordially in the sanitary
movement; otherwise comparatively little good can be effected. You may
provide an efficient water supply, yet, if the housewife will not use
the water as it ought to be used,--if she be lazy and dirty,--the house
will be foul and comfortless still. You may provide for ventilation,
yet, if offensive matters be not removed, and doors and windows are kept
closed, the pure outer air will be excluded, and the house will still
smell fusty and unwholesome. In any case, there must be a cleanly woman
to superintend the affairs of the house; and she cannot be made so by
Act of Parliament! The Sanitary Commissioners cannot, by any
"Notification," convert the slatternly shrew into a tidy housewife, nor
the disorderly drunkard into an industrious, home-loving husband. There
must, therefore, be individual effort on the part of the housewife in
every working man's Home. As a recent writer on Home Reform observes,--
"We must begin by insisting that, however much of the physical and moral
evils of the working classes may be justly attributable to their
dwellings, it is too often the case that more ought, in truth, to be
attributed to themselves. For, surely, the inmate depends less on the
house, than the house on the inmate; as mind has more power over matter
than matter over mind. Let a dwelling be ever so poor and incommodious,
yet a family with decent and cleanly habits will contrive to make the
best of it, and will take care that there shall be nothing offensive in
it which they have power to remove. Whereas a model house, fitted up
with every convenience and comfort which modern science can supply,
will, if occupied by persons of intemperate and uncleanly habits,
speedily become a disgrace and a nuisance. A sober, industrious, and
cleanly couple will impart an air of decency and respectability to the
poorest dwelling; while the spendthrift, the drunkard, or the gambler
will convert a palace into a scene of discomfort and disgust. Since,
therefore, so much depends on the character and conduct of the parties
themselves, it is right that they should feel their responsibility in
this matter, and that they should know and attend to the various points
connected with the improvement of their own Homes."
While this important truth should be kept steadily in view, every
possible exertion ought, at the same time, to be made to provide a
greater abundance of comfortable, decent, and comely dwellings for the
working classes; for it is to be lamented that, in many districts, they
are, as it were, forced by the necessities of their condition to
gravitate into localities, and to inhabit dwellings where decency is
rendered almost impossible, where life becomes a slow dying, and where
the influences operating on the entire human energies, physical and
moral, are of the most deleterious character.
Homes are the manufactories of men, and as the Homes are, so will the
men be. Mind will be degraded by the physical influences around
it,--decency will be destroyed by constant contact with impurity and
defilement,--and coarseness of manners, habits, and tastes, will become
inevitable. You cannot rear a kindly nature, sensitive against evil,
careful of proprieties, and desirous of moral and intellectual
improvement, amidst the darkness, dampness, disorder, and discomfort
which unhappily characterize so large a portion of the dwellings of the
poor in our large towns; and until we can, by some means or other,
improve their domestic accommodation, their low moral and social
condition must be regarded as inevitable.
We want not only a better class of dwellings, but we require the people
to be so educated as to appreciate them. An Irish landlord took his
tenantry out of their mud huts, and removed them into comfortable
dwellings which he had built for their accommodation. When he returned
to his estate, he was greatly disappointed. The houses were as untidy
and uncomfortable as before. The pig was still under the bed, and the
hens over it. The concrete floor was as dirty as the mud one had been.
The panes of the windows were broken, and the garden was full of weeds.
The landlord wrote to a friend in despair. The friend replied, "You have
begun at the wrong end. You ought to have taught them the value of
cleanliness, thriftiness, and comfort." To begin at the beginning,
therefore, we must teach the people the necessity of cleanliness, its
virtues and its wholesomeness; for which purpose it is requisite that
they should be intelligent, capable of understanding ideas conveyed in
words, able to discern, able to read, able to think. In short, the
people, as children, must first have been to school, and properly taught
there; whereas we have allowed the majority of the working people to
grow up untaught, nearly half of them unable to read and write; and then
we expect them to display the virtues, prudence, judgment, and
forethought of well-educated beings!
It is of the first importance to teach people cleanly habits. This can
be done without teaching them either reading or writing. Cleanliness is
more than wholesomeness. It furnishes an atmosphere of self-respect, and
influences the moral condition of the entire household. It is the best
exponent of the spirit of Thrift. It is to the economy of the household,
what hygiene is to the human body. It should preside at every detail of
domestic service. It indicates comfort and well-being. It is among the
distinctive attributes of civilisation, and marks the progress of
nations.
Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of
travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as
respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of
pollution. He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be
obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and
into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any
other description. People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent,
industrious, and self-respecting. Unclean people are uncivilized. The
dirty classes of great towns are invariably the "dangerous classes" of
those towns. And if we would civilize the classes yet uncivilized, we
must banish dirt from amongst them.
Yet dirt forms no part of our nature. It is a parasite, feeding upon
human life, and destroying it. It is hideous and disgusting. There can
be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it.
Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are
degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt
is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where
the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must
be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an
affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers
have clearly made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes;
and that they are prone to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and
opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul
conditions in which they live.
We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of
cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root
of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency.
We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling
result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are,
to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and
circumstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp
themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings
and the intellectual powers.
Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers. Among the eastern
nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion. They esteem it not
only as next to godliness, but as a part of godliness itself. They
connect the idea of internal sanctity with that of external
purification. They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they
worship to come into His presence covered with impurity. Hence the
Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to
that of mosques; and alongside the place of worship is usually found the
place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of
purification previous to their act of worship.
"What worship," says a great writer, "is there not in mere washing!
perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in
his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the
limpid pool of a running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt
step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect
outer pureness--that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of
imperfection--how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences
to thy very soul! thou hast an increased tendency towards all good
things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages, with joy and holy
gratitude, had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker's gift and
will."
The common well-being of men, women, and children depends upon attention
to what at first sight may appear comparatively trivial matters. And
unless these small matters be attended to, comfort in person, mind, and
feeling is absolutely impossible. The physical satisfaction of a child,
for example, depends upon attention to its feeding, clothing, and
washing. These are the commonest of common things, and yet they are of
the most essential importance. If the child is not properly fed and
clothed, it will grow up feeble and ill-conditioned. And as the child
is, so will the man be.
Grown people cannot be comfortable without regular attention to these
common matters. Every one needs, and ought to have, comfort at home; and
comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity,
industry,--in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself
apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the
mending of a shirt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a
bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the washing and dressing of a baby, are
all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do
these, before the management of a household, however poor, is entrusted
to her.
"Why," asked Lord Ashburton in a lecture to the students of the Wolvesey
training-schools, "why was one mother of a family a better economist
than another? Why could one live in abundance where another starved?
Why, in similar dwellings, were the children of one parent healthy, of
another puny and ailing? Why could this labourer do with ease a task
that would kill his fellow? It was not luck nor chance that decided
those differences; it was the patient observation of nature that
suggested to some gifted minds rules for their guidance which had
escaped the heedlessness of others."
It is not so much, however, the patient observation of nature, as good
training in the home and in the school, that enables some women to
accomplish so much more than others, in the development of human beings,
and the promotion of human comfort. And to do this efficiently, women as
well as men require to be instructed as to the nature of the objects
upon which they work.
Take one branch of science as an illustration--the physiological. In
this science we hold that every woman should receive some instruction.
And why? Because, if the laws of physiology were understood by women,
children would grow up into better, healthier, happier, and probably
wiser, men and women. Children are subject to certain physiological
laws, the observance of which is necessary for their health and comfort.
Is it not reasonable, therefore, to expect that women should know
something of those laws, and of their operation? If they are ignorant of
them they will be liable to commit all sorts of blunders, productive of
suffering, disease, and death. To what are we to attribute the frightful
mortality of children in most of our large towns--where one-half of all
that are born perish before they reach their fifth year? If women, as
well as men, knew something of the laws of healthy living, about the
nature of the atmosphere, how its free action upon the blood is
necessary to health--of the laws of ventilation, cleanliness, and
nutrition,--we cannot but think that the moral, not less than the
physical condition of the human beings committed to their charge, would
be greatly improved and promoted.
Were anything like a proper attention given to common things, there
would not be such an amount of discomfort, disease, and mortality
amongst the young. But we accustom people to act as if there were no
such provisions as natural laws. If we violate them, we do not escape
the consequences because we have been ignorant of their mode of
operation. We have been provided with intelligence that we might _know_
them; and if society keep its members blind and ignorant, the evil
consequences are inevitably reaped. Thus tens of thousands perish for
lack of knowledge of even the smallest, and yet most necessary
conditions of right living.
Women have also need to be taught the important art of domestic economy.
If they do not earn the family income, at least they have to spend the
money earned; and their instruction ought to have a view to the spending
of that money wisely. For this purpose, a knowledge of arithmetic is
absolutely necessary. Some may say, "What use can a woman have for
arithmetic?" But when men marry, they soon find this out. If the woman
who has a household to manage be innocent of addition and
multiplication; and if she fail to keep a record of her income or
expenditure, she will, before long, find herself in great trouble. She
will find that she cannot make the ends meet, and then run into debt. If
she spend too much on dress, she will have too little for food or
education. She will commit extravagances in one direction or another,
and thus subject her household to great discomfort. She may also bring
her husband into trouble through the debts she has contracted, and make
a beginning of his misfortunes and sometimes of his ruin.
Much might be said in favour of household management, and especially in
favour of improved cookery. Ill-cooked meals is a source of discomfort
in many families. Bad cooking is waste,--waste of money and loss of
comfort. Whom God has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and
ill-boiled potatoes have very often put asunder. Among the "common
things" which educators should teach the rising generation, this ought
certainly not to be overlooked. It is the commonest and yet most
neglected of the branches of female education.
The greater part of human labour is occupied in the direct production of
the materials for human food. The farming classes and their labourers
devote themselves to the planting, rearing, and reaping of oats and
other cereals; and the grazing farmer to the production of cattle and
sheep, for the maintenance of the population at large. All these
articles--corn, beef, mutton, and such-like--are handed over to the
female half of the human species to be converted into food, for the
sustenance of themselves, their husbands, and their families. How do
they use their power? Can they cook? Have they been taught to cook? Is
it not a fact that, in this country, cooking is one of the lost or
undiscovered arts?
Thousands of artizans and labourers are deprived of half the actual
nutriment of their food, and continue half-starved, because their wives
are utterly ignorant of the art of cooking. They are yet in entire
darkness as to the economizing of food, and the means of rendering it
palatable and digestible.
Even the middle classes are badly served in this respect. "If we could
see," says a public writer, "by the help of an Asmodeus, what is going
on at the dinner hour of the humbler of the middle class,--what a
spectacle of discomfort, waste, ill-temper, and consequent ill-conduct
it would be! The man quarrels with his wife because there is nothing he
can eat, and he generally makes up in drink for the deficiencies in the
article of food. There is thus not only the direct waste of food and
detriment to health, but the further consequent waste of the use of
spirits, with its injury to the habits and the health."
On the other hand, people who eat well, drink moderately; the
satisfaction of the appetite dispensing with the necessity for resorting
to stimulants. Good humour too, and good health, follow a good meal; and
by a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well dressed in its
way. A rich man may live very expensively and very ill; and a poor man
may live frugally and very well, if it be his good fortune to have a
good cook in his wife or in his servant.
The most worthless unit in a family is an ill-managing wife, or an
indolent woman of any sort. The fair sex are sometimes very acute in
what concerns themselves. They keep a tight hand over their dressmakers
and milliners. They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or
a tuck too deep. But if their knowledge only extends to their own dress,
they are not help-meets, but incumbrances. If they know nothing of their
kitchen, and are at the mercy of the cook, their table will soon become
intolerable. Bad soup, soft and flabby fish, meat burnt outside and raw
within. The husband will soon fly from the Barmecide feast, and take
refuge in his club, where he will not only find food that he can digest,
but at the same time fly from the domestic discord that usually
accompanies ill-cooked victuals at home.
Mr. Smee says that "diseases of the digestive organs greatly exceed in
England the relative number found in other countries." The reason is,
that in no other country do men eat so much ill-cooked food. The least
observant of travellers must have been struck with admiration at the
readiness with which a dinner of eight or ten dishes of various eatables
makes its appearance in foreign inns; particularly when he remembers the
perpetual mutton chop and mashed potatoes of the English road. The
author remembers arriving at a roadside inn, in a remote part of
Dauphiny, immediately under the foot of the Pic du Midi. On looking at
the clay floor, and the worn state of the furniture, he remarked to his
friend, "Surely we can get no dinner here." "Wait till you see," was his
answer. In about half-an-hour, the table (though propped up) was spread
with a clean table-cloth; and successive dishes of soup, fowl,
"ros-bif," pomme-de-terre frite, French beans, with wholesome bread and
butter, made their appearance. In the principal inns of most provincial
towns in England, it would not have been possible to obtain such a
dinner.
Great would be the gain to the community if cookery were made an
ordinary branch of female education. To the poor, the gain would be
incalculable. "Among the prizes which the Bountifuls of both sexes are
fond of bestowing in the country, we should like to see some offered for
the best boiled potato, the best grilled mutton chop, and the best
seasoned hotch-potch, soup, or broth. In writing of a well-boiled
potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt of many for
attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so common. But the
fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the origin of contempt,
from their ignorance--there being not one person in a hundred who has
ever seen and tasted that great rarity--a well-boiled potato."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Examiner_.]
In short, we want common sense in cookery, as in most other things. Food
should be used, and not abused. Much of it is now absolutely wasted,
wasted for want of a little art in cooking it. Food is not only wasted
by bad cooking; but much of it is thrown away which French women would
convert into something savoury and digestible. Health, morals, and
family enjoyments, are all connected with the question of cookery. Above
all, it is the handmaid of Thrift. It makes the most and the best of the
bounties of God. It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account.
Every Englishwoman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished
in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the
members of her household.
"It appears to me," said Mrs. Margaretta Grey, "that with an increase of
wealth unequally distributed, and a pressure of population, there has
sprung up amongst us a spurious refinement, that cramps the energy and
circumscribes the usefulness of women in the upper class of society. A
lady, to be such, must be a lady, and nothing else.... Ladies dismissed
from the dairy, the confectionery, the store-room, the still-room, the
poultry-yard, the kitchen-garden, and the orchard" [she might have
added, the spinning-wheel], "have hardly yet found for themselves a
sphere equally useful and important in the pursuits of trade and art, to
which to apply their too abundant leisure.
"When, at any time, has society presented, on the one hand, so large an
array of respectably educated individuals, embarrassed for want of a
proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a multitude of
untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their
misery and degradation? What an obstruction to usefulness and all
eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly
connected, to work at anything!"[1]
[Footnote 1: _Memoir of John Grey, of Dalston_. p. 290.]
Many intelligent, high-minded ladies, who have felt disgusted at the
idleness to which "society" condemns them, have of late years undertaken
the work of visiting the poor and of nursing--a noble work. But there is
another school of usefulness which stands open to them. Let them study
the art of common cookery, and diffuse the knowledge of it amongst the
people. They will thus do an immense amount of good; and bring down the
blessings of many a half-hungered husband upon their benevolent heads.
Women of the poorer classes require much help from those who are better
educated, or who have been placed in better circumstances than
themselves. The greater number of them marry young, and suddenly enter
upon a life for which they have not received the slightest preparation.
They know nothing of cookery, of sewing or clothes mending, or of
economical ways of spending their husbands' money. Hence slatternly and
untidy habits, and uncomfortable homes, from which the husband is often
glad to seek refuge in the nearest public-house. The following story,
told by Joseph Corbett, a Birmingham operative, before a Parliamentary
Committee, holds true of many working people in the manufacturing
districts.
"My mother," he said, "worked in a manufactory from a very early age.
She was clever and industrious, and, moreover, she had the reputation of
being virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working
man. She was married early. She became the mother of eleven children: I
am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important
duties of a wife and mother. But she was lamentably deficient in
domestic knowledge. In that most important of all human instruction--how
to make the home and the fireside to possess a charm for her husband and
children--she had never received one single lesson. She had children
apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe
being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the
family increased, so everything like comfort disappeared altogether. The
power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She
knew not the value of cherishing in my father's mind a love of domestic
objects. Not one moment's happiness did I ever see under my father's
roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the
entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother.
He became intemperate; and his intemperance made her necessitous. She
made many efforts to abstain from shop-work; but her pecuniary
necessities forced her back into the shop. The family was large; and
every moment was required at home. I have known her, after the close of
a hard day's work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together
washing and mending clothes. My father could have no comfort there.
These domestic obligations, which in a well-regulated house (even in
that of a working man, where there are prudence and good management)
would be done so as not to annoy the husband, were to my father a sort
of annoyance; and he, from an ignorant and mistaken notion, sought
comfort in an alehouse. My mother's ignorance of household duties; my
father's consequent irritability and intemperance; the frightful
poverty; the constant quarrelling; the pernicious example to my brothers
and sisters; the bad effect upon the future conduct of my brothers,--one
and all of us being forced out to work so young that our feeble earnings
would produce only 1_s_. a week,--cold and hunger, and the innumerable
sufferings of my childhood, crowd upon my mind and overpower me. They
keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families
in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who are in a similar
state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the
instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to
produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great
amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and
disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation,
female education is disgracefully neglected. I attach more importance to
it than to anything else; for woman imparts the first impressions to the
young susceptible mind; she models the child from which is formed the
future man."