attention to the sewerage of the metropolis, and proposed the erection
of a grand cloaca maxima, and various architectural works along the
Thames, with the meritorious objects of preventing the pollution of
the river, and saving the refuse. His plan was to form a canal on each
bank parallel to the river, so as to intercept the whole of the
sewerage, and convey it to large reservoirs or places of deposit at a
distance. His plan for the north bank was a canal, constructed of
iron, costing 60,000_l._ per mile, extending from Westminster to the
mouth of the Regent’s Canal, “where the grand receptacle should be
from which the soil should be conveyed to barges, and transmitted by
canals to various parts of the country.”—_Committee on Sewers’
Report_, p. 169. The primary objection to this plan is that it would
send the refuse still further out of the reach of large districts,
where it is wanted as manure, to a place where it would only be
available to the places for which canal conveyance would be
convenient; that it would leave untouched the great obstacle to the
use of manure, namely, the cost of removal and application by cartage
and hand labour. The construction of the canal would also involve the
disturbance of the whole of the wharf property; as originally
proposed, it involved their entire reconstruction, and the erection of
a grand colonnade along the banks of the river. For the removal of the
refuse, engineers of practical experience agree that the most eligible
plan was by various small conduits, not larger, where iron pipes might
be necessary, than the pipes used by the water companies in bringing
water into the metropolis, at a cost not a fifth, perhaps, of one
large canal, and without any disturbance of property. For the
application of the refuse as manure, practical experience at
Edinburgh, and of irrigation elsewhere, shows that the most effectual
mode of distribution for use is by water-meadows or drainage and
irrigation combined; forming an unseen, unostentatious, self-acting
system of excretory ducts, altogether superseding cartage or hand
labour, and conveying the refuse in closed streams, acting constantly
and rapidly until they distribute the refuse into the field of
production.
Footnote 12:
A litre is one pint and a twentieth.
Footnote 13:
The spread of the knowledge of the fact that animals are subject to
typhus consumption, and the chief of the train of disorders supposed
to be peculiarly human, will, it may be expected, more powerfully
direct attention to the common means of prevention. The following
extract from a report on the labours of the Board of Health at Paris
will show the effect of bad ventilation on cattle:—“The _epizootie_
are in many respects less serious than the epidemics; nevertheless, as
they often affect the animals which serve for the nutriment of man,
and that apart from this consideration they may have grave
consequences for the public health, they have constantly engaged the
care of the council. In 1834, an _epizootie_ was reported to the
administration which prevailed among the cows of the communes round
Paris, and which caused a great mortality. The researches of the
council established that this _epizootie_ was only a chronic disease,
a true pulmonary phthisis, to which has been given the name of
_pommelière_, and by which the greater part of the cows had been
attacked which fill the stables of the milkmen of Paris and its
environs. According to the council, the principal cause of the evil
was to be attributed to the vicious regimen to which this species of
animal is subjected. It is known that they pass a part of the year in
stables perfectly closed, in which the space is not proportioned to
the number of inmates, in which the vitiated air renews itself with
extreme difficulty, and in which the heat is sometimes suffocating. It
is known, also, that they pass suddenly from the food of the stable to
pasture, and that in this change they go from the hot and humid
atmosphere of the stable to a sudden exposure to the continual
variations of the external air. This alternation of food and of heat
and cold operates as a powerful cause of disease. But as the evil does
not announce itself in a violent manner, as its progress is not very
rapid, as there is even a period in the disease in which the animal is
disposed to get flesh, the cow-feeder, who knows to what point to keep
her, sells her when she is ready to calve. It is in a radius of 30
leagues from the capital that cows of this kind are purchased by the
jobbers, who supply the milkmen of Paris. With these last they still
hold out a certain number of years, if they are properly cared for,
but in general they are kept in stables which are neither sufficiently
large nor sufficiently airy, where they are exposed to the same causes
which gave birth to the malady. The phthisis arrives insensibly at its
last stage, and carries off every year from Paris and its
neighbourhood a great number of these cows.” A similar discovery was
only lately made as to the effect of defective ventilation on the
cavalry horses in some of the government barracks in England; and it
is stated, that a saving of several thousand pounds per annum was
effected by an easy improvement of the ventilation of the barracks
near the metropolis. An agriculturalist had a large number of sheep
housed to feed them on mangel wurzel, but a great number of them
sickened and died, and he declared that it was the food which had
killed them. A veterinary surgeon, however, who happened to be aware
of the consequences of defective ventilation, pointed out the
remedy,—a better ventilation for the sheep, which were overcrowded.
The defect was remedied; the sheep ate well, and throve upon the
mangel wurzel.
Footnote 14:
Vide extracts from the official report in the Appendix.
Footnote 15:
The following were the terms of our instructions to the district
medical commissioners of inquiry:—“A given amount of evil is
experienced by a class placed under peculiar circumstances; a large
portion of that evil is shared by other classes not under these
peculiar circumstances; to attribute the whole of the evil experienced
by the first class to those peculiar circumstances is obviously
fallacious. It is conceived that it is only by investigating the
subject with this precaution constantly in the mind that it is
possible to arrive at a just conclusion. While you carefully observe
the effects of labour on the children and the adult workpeople, and
report every case in which you conceive it to be excessive, and state
the reasons on which you ground that opinion, you are requested to
investigate minutely the concurrent causes of ill health. With this
view you are requested in every case to examine and report the state
of the drains in and about the factory: the state of the neighbourhood
of the factory as to dryness or dampness, cleanliness or filthiness:
the state of the houses and neighbourhood in which the children and
adult workpeople take their meals and exercise (if they leave the
factory), and where they sleep: the state of the air within the
factory, and which the workpeople usually respire, whether it be fresh
or whether it be not fresh, owing to deficient ventilation,—whether it
be pure, or whether it be rendered impure by effluvia floating in it,
and if so, what the effluvia are: what organs of the body are likely
to be injured, and what, from careful examination, you find to be
actually injured: the temperature of the air, the highest, the lowest,
and the average temperature, and the condition of the air as to
dryness or moisture.”
Footnote 16:
Rapport de la Commission des Epidémies de l’Académie Royale de
Médecine pour l’année 1839 et un partie d’ 1840. Par M. Brichetan,
Secrétaire Rapporteur de la Commission.
Footnote 17:
Vide Dr. Barham’s Report on Truro, Appendix.
Footnote 18:
These Tables are compiled from deaths which took place in Manchester
during the year 1840; in Leeds during the year 1840; in Liverpool
during the year 1840; in Bath during the year 1839; in Bethnal Green
during the year 1839; in the Strand union during the year 1840; in the
Kendal union during the year ended 30th September, 1841; in the county
of Wilts during the year 1840; and in Rutland during the three years
1838, 1839, and 1840.
Footnote 19:
A brief explanation of the construction of tables of mortality may be
desirable to prevent misapprehensions by those who are unacquainted
with the nature of such evidence. If amongst 4481 who die each year,
as at Leeds, it be found that altogether, man, woman, and child, they
have lived 92,734 years, that number equally divided, without
distinction of the old and young, gives 21 years as the _average
period of life_. The variations of such average periods, as shown by
the tables showing the mean periods of death of a whole population,
are deemed the best test of its condition and progress. The tables of
_proportional mortality_ are such as those of Liverpool, where, out of
223,054 inhabitants, 7435 die; that is to say, one-thirtieth of the
ascertained population are swept away every year. Such tables only
serve, however, for remote comparison of the condition of different
districts, for it will be perceived how large will be the different
conditions of two communities having exactly the same proportions of
mortality, but in one of which the deaths occur principally amongst
the infant population, and the other in which they occur amongst the
adults. Thus in all the parishes of Leeds, where the average age of
deaths of all who die is 21 years, since the deaths occur chiefly at
young ages amongst the labouring classes, the proportions of the
population who die annually is only 1 in 37. The average age of death,
or the average extent of life to every individual, may go on
increasing, and yet the proportions who die remain the same. Hence it
is that statistical returns of the proportions of death, which are so
generally used, are fundamentally unstable as means of ascertaining
the progressive sanitary condition of a population in different
countries. The _probabilities of life_ at different periods of life on
which insurance companies act, are determined by tables of a different
construction. To form a table of the probabilities of life at given
periods, in 1000 cases say, the date of the birth in each case is
ascertained, and observations are made of how many remain alive at the
end of each year at the different periods of life. From the different
ages at which that 1000 have died, it is held to be probable that
every other 1000 persons similarly circumstanced will die. The
observations on which tables of this description have been founded
have generally been from mixed classes differently circumstanced, and
no observations on a basis sufficiently large, that I am aware, have
been made to determine the probabilities of life to any one class of
workpeople, or to any one class of professional persons. The three
tables of the proportions of deaths at different ages would be of
little service to indicate the probability of life at different ages
unless we could ascertain with exactness the precise numbers of the
classes _living_ from which the deaths have occurred. More than half
the children of the working classes die, and only one-fifth of the
children of the gentry die, before the fifth year of age; and after
having attained that age, the _probabilities of life_ of the
labourer’s child might be greater than that of the child of the person
of the superior classes; but though we have other evidence that the
reverse is the case, we have not the evidence of well-constructed
tables of the probability of life at different periods strictly
applicable to that class. Though the proportions per cent. of those
who die in the higher and in the lower classes approximate in the
periods between 20 and 60 years of age, yet we know that the
probabilities of life in each class at each period are widely
different. The probable duration of life of a miner who had attained
40 years of age may not be, and we have reason to believe is not, half
that of the agricultural labourer, not one-third that of a person of
the higher ranks who had attained the same period.
Footnote 20:
It is the practice in Geneva for female servants to delay marriage
until they have saved enough to furnish a house, &c. In illustration
of this state of things it is stated that in 290 out of 956 marriages,
the female was at the time of marriage older than the male. With
further advances in prosperity, it is anticipated that age of marriage
would again diminish.
Footnote 21:
“Out of 100 deaths in the 16th century, 25·92 were children in their
first year; in the 17th century, 23·72; in the 18th century, 20·12; in
1801–13, they were 16·57; and in 1814–33, they were 13·85.” In
Liverpool, the number of children which in the year 1840 died under
one year of age was no less than 23 per cent., or what it was in
Geneva in the 17th century. In the county of Wilts where the
proportionate mortality is 1 in 58, the deaths of children in the
first year were 16 per cent. Dr. Griffin, in a report on the sanitary
condition of the population of Limerick, where the births appear to
bear such proportions to the marriages as they appear to have borne in
Geneva in the earliest periods, namely, of five children to a
marriage, and more in the worst-conditioned districts, makes an
important observation on the subject: “I find that as the poor nurse
their own children, there is in general an interval of about two years
between the birth of one child and that of the next; but if the child
dies early on the breast, this interval will be much shorter; and if
this occurs often, there will be a certain number born as it were _for
the purpose of dying_; and these being soon replaced, the same number
may still be preserved as if there had been few or no deaths, or only
the ordinary number.” Of these 55 per cent. died.
Footnote 22:
The registries in England at present supply no means of distinguishing
the migrant population who die in given places; and in each return a
small proportion of deaths have been omitted where the station of the
party has not been described; but taking as approximations the returns
of the ages of all who die, no district examined appears to present so
high a probability of life as at Geneva. The average age of all who
died in the respective periods before stated appear, from the returns
I have obtained, to be in the county of Rutland 39 years; in the
Kendal union 36; in the county of Wilts 35 years; in Bath 31; in the
Kensington union 30; in the Strand union 28; in the Whitechapel union
27; in Bethnal-green 21; in Leeds 21; in Manchester 20; in Bolton 19;
in Liverpool 17. By the Northampton Tables the probability of life in
infancy to all born was 25 years; in Carlisle it was 38.
Footnote 23:
Some constitutions are found which resist vaccine matter. Here and
there constitutions appear which resist all the noxious influences by
which they are surrounded, and attain extreme old age. Not
unfrequently we find the existence of these solitary individuals
referred to as proofs of the general salubrity of the very
circumstances under which generations have fallen and been buried
around them. It is a singular fact, as yet unexplained, that the
greatest proportion of centenarians are of the labouring classes; and
that instances of them have from time to time appeared amidst the
crowded populations in some of the worst neighbourhoods in London,
where the average duration of life is the lowest. It is remarked by
Mr. Mallet, that in Geneva extreme old age has not participated in the
prolongation of life which has taken place in the less advanced ages.
In the periods of from 60 to 70 years of age the amelioration is
inconsiderable; after 70 years there is no perceptible improvement;
after 80 years the aged have indeed a little less probability of life
at the present time than they had in the 16th century. Centenarians,
who were not rare in the 16th and 17th centuries, now disappear;
during the last 27 years Geneva has not produced a single one.
Footnote 24:
_Bibliothèque Universelle, September, 1831._
In Alexandria, which is a seat of pestilence, where the Arab
population leave the ordure before their doors (as we have seen large
classes of the lower population do in this country), where the dog is
the only scavenger of the animal refuse (as the pig is in many
districts in our towns), where those who have died of plague remain
unburied for days amidst the abodes of the living (as those who have
died of fever often do in the poorest districts in this
country),—there, under the more powerful action of a burning sun,
disease and death are proportionately rife; and, as shown by some
returns of death in 1841, out of a population of 60,000, the deaths
were 7,017 (of which 1,165 only were from plague), or more than
one-tenth of the population. It is known, however, that in the
well-cleansed and best streets, inhabited by the European and
fluctuating population, the proportion of mortality is not greater
than amidst a similar population in the towns of Europe; but it is
stated that the lower population, notwithstanding that it has been
decimated by the annual mortality, has, within the last quarter of a
century, more than doubled.
Footnote 25:
An English military officer, who has had much practice as an engineer,
and who has done much to protect the health of the population of one
of the South American towns, by drainage, whose opinion I took on the
efficiency of measures for cleansing inferior districts, recently
informed me that he should take advantage of a favourable change which
had occurred in one of the recent revolutions, to return to South
America, and try what he agreed was the most efficient course of
proceeding, commencing with the middle classes, by inducing the new
government to undertake works for bringing water into the houses of
the inhabitants, and adopt the self-acting system of cleansing the
poorest districts, and the use of the refuse for distant production,
on the principles established in this Report.
The authorities in Hamburgh have applied to Mr. Lindley, the engineer,
for a plan for the drainage of that town, and he has recommended for
adoption the same principles, and the application of the refuse for
agriculture, at a distance from the houses, instead of discharging it
into the water which washes the town.
Footnote 26:
Dr. Bisset Hawkins, the medical Commissioner in the Factory Inquiry,
stated in his Report, “I believe that most travellers are struck by
the lowness of stature, the leanness and paleness which present
themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among
the factory classes. I have never been in any town in Great Britain
nor in Europe in which degeneracy of form and colour from the national
standard has been so obvious.” P. 6. From a return obtained in 1836
and presented to the Manchester Statistical Society, of the cattle
passing the toll-gates and the meat sold in the markets, it appeared
that the consumption exclusively amongst this population could not be
less than 105 lbs. each person annually, man, woman, and child, or 450
lbs. yearly per family of butchers’ meat alone, exclusively of bacon,
pork, fish, and poultry. The wretched personal appearance of this
population was only equalled by that of the Irish population of St.
Giles, where the man earned from 14_s._ or 16_s._ to 1_l._ per week,
(the wife and child earning something in addition,) but where it is
their habit to live chiefly on potatoes and use little meat. The
effect of a pure atmosphere, independently of diet, is shown in this
population when they go into the country during harvest time. After a
fortnight or three weeks’ absence, in which they will have had little
change of living, except, perhaps, taking less spirits, the whole
family return with the hue of health.
Footnote 27:
I have referred to the experience since the year 1801 in France, where
the registration of births amongst the migratory population of the
crowded districts, where the greatest mortality prevails, is likely to
have been as imperfect as in England, but that experience is, on the
whole, confirmatory, and proves that in the worst districts the births
still exceed the mortality.
┌─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┐
│ │ Increase of │Proportion of│Proportion of│ Excess of │
│ │Population in│Births in 35 │Deaths in 35 │ Births over │
│ │ 35 Years in │ Years to │ Years to │ Deaths in │
│ │every 10,000 │ 10,000 of │ 10,000 of │ 10,000 of │
│ │ Persons. │ Population. │ Population. │ Population. │
├─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┤
│5 groups of │ │ │ │ │
│ departments│ 311│ 10,705│ 8,079│ 2,626│
│ of _lowest │ │ │ │ │
│ mortality_ │ │ │ │ │
│6 groups of │ │ │ │ │
│ departments│ 2,396│ 12,439│ 10,044│ 2,395│
│ of _mean │ │ │ │ │
│ mortality_ │ │ │ │ │
│6 groups of │ │ │ │ │
│ departments│ 4,190│ 13,024│ 12,350│ 674│
│ of _highest│ │ │ │ │
│ mortality_ │ │ │ │ │
└─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┘
Footnote 28:
In recruiting for the French army, the standard is now fixed at 1·566
metres of height, which is about 5 feet 1½ inches English.
Fifty years ago, however, the standard height was 5 feet 4 inches
English.
The English standard is for the Foot Guards 5 feet 6 inches.
lbs. avoirdupois.
The mean weight in Belgium (Brussels and environs)
of the man is 140·49
In France (Paris and the neighbourhood)
the man is 136·89
The mean weight of the Englishman (taken at
Cambridge), from 18 to 25 150·98
(In coaches it is usually considered that it
averages 165 lbs.)
The mean height of the Belgian male is 5 feet 6‑3/10 inches
The mean height of the Frenchman 5 feet 4 inches
The mean height of the Englishman 5 feet 9½ inches
(M. Quetelet and M. Villermé, on the authority of M. Tenon, Annuaire
de l’Obs. de Bruxelles, 1836.)
Footnote 29:
The diseases included under “Other Diseases,” include the deaths
registered from a number of miscellaneous causes too numerous to be
specified in the table.
Footnote 30:
Where so much independent provision is made, as by clubs, only a part
of the consequences of premature deaths appear on the poor’s roll. The
population of Camborne is less exclusively mining than is Gwennap; but
the records of pauperism in the office afford marks of a general
difference in the condition of the population of the two parishes.
┌────────┬───────────────────┬────────────────────┬───────────────────┐
│ │ │Ratio of Widows and │ │
│ │Ratio of Paupers to│Women whose Husbands│Cost of Relief per │
│Parish. │ the whole │have deserted them, │ Head on the whole │
│ │ Population. │or are transported, │ Population. │
│ │ │ to the whole │ │
│ │ │ Population. │ │
├────────┼───────────────────┼────────────────────┼─────────┬─────────┤
│ │ │ │ _s._ │ _d._ │
│Gwennap │ 1 in 25 │ 1 in 186 │3 │2 │
│Illogan │ 1 in 35 │ 1 in 346 │2 │2¾ │
│Camborne│ 1 in 34 │ 1 in 401 │2 │4¾ │
└────────┴───────────────────┴────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┘
Footnote 31:
I am informed that regulations on the principle of those we
recommended, under the Factory Commission for the Protection of Adult
Workmen from the consequences of Accidents, are now adopted in the
Prussian code, and practically enforced.
Footnote 32:
An Act made in Ireland the 3rd year of his present Majesty “for better
preventing the severities, &c., has the following clause:—“Whereas
many infectious disorders are daily produced by the confinement of
numbers in close prisons, whereunto there is no back-yard adjoining,
and the lives of his majesty’s subjects are endangered by the bringing
of prisoners into public streets for air; be it enacted—That every
grand jury at the assizes or quarter sessions may be enabled, and they
are hereby required and directed to contract either by lease, or to
purchase a piece of ground next adjoining the gaol, or as near as
conveniently can be had thereto, and cause to be erected necessary
houses, and a wall sufficient for the security of the said
prisoners.””
Footnote 33: