be a great error to estimate their benefit as merely relative to the
number of persons at any one time inmates of them. No doubt it is a
great advantage that they furnish, at the ordinary prices of the day, or
at a still lower price, so excellent accommodation to several hundreds
of persons; and it is a still greater good (particularly in regard of
those established for single men and single women) that they drill their
inmates into decent and orderly habits, and accustom them to a high
standard of household-accommodation, which will probably influence their
subsequent married lives in the same desirable direction. But,
indirectly, their utility has a far wider scope. They stand in bright
contrast to the dark features of filth and unwholesomeness which environ
them; they familiarise the poorest classes generally with all the
practical advantages of cleanliness; they show that dirt is not
inevitable; they therefore create and foster among the humblest members
of society, a laudable discontent with defective sanitary arrangements;
and they establish a strong public opinion, grounded on experience, in
favour of those conditions of cleanliness and comfort, which determine
the maintenance of health.
* * * * *
That all the great results of sanitary science can be applied in their
utmost perfectness to the dwellings of the poor, for the payment of a
rent often below, and never above, the average given for some miserable
doghole, that poisons its inhabitants, is a truth of immense importance,
deserving the widest dissemination, and pregnant with the most hopeful
promise. Such advantages spring from and illustrate the economical
application of the associative principle; they cannot be obtained
otherwise than by the application of capital, in such an amount as lies
only within the compass of wealthy corporations, or is reached by the
voluntary combination of several private purses. While the labouring
classes are abundantly able to maintain these institutions when
established, and to render them amply remunerative to those whose
capital has first founded them, it is obvious that no power of
association lying within their means can suffice to originate such work.
The task of initiation rests with others. And therefore it is,
gentlemen, that on this occasion I have been induced to bring under your
notice, as a most important part of my subject, the outline of what has
been done in the matter of Model Dwellings and Public Baths and
Washhouses. Feeling assured that establishments of this nature are of
infinite utility in the several respects I have enumerated; feeling
assured that, beyond their immediate operation on the health of inmates
and users, they also tend, by their indirect educational influence, to
improve the social habits, to promote the civilization, to elevate the
general tone and character of the labouring classes, I earnestly
recommend them to your attention; hoping that you may either yourselves
confer on the poor population of the City the advantage of your
patronage and succour in this respect, or else may transfer the matter
to the jurisdiction of the Common Council, with all the influence and
authority in its favour which your recommendation would insure.
SUGGESTIONS FOR SANITARY ORGANISATION IN THE CITY.
Having now enumerated the sanitary evils of the City, and the remedies
which appear to my mind most appropriate for their removal, it becomes
desirable that, in concluding, I should point out to you the
organisation which seems necessary to be adopted during the gradual
transition of the City from its present to a healthier state;--an
organisation which may render this transitional period as short as
possible, and may most effectually contribute to mitigate, for the time,
the pressure of such evils as cannot immediately be removed.
* * * * *
The object of this organisation lies in a word; Inspection--gentlemen,
inspection of the most constant, most searching, most intelligent, and
most trustworthy kind, is that in which the provisional management of
our sanitary affairs must essentially consist.
I presume I may take for granted that, in some form or other, a
_Committee of Health_ will exist, either as a Committee of the Court of
Common Council, or as one of this Hon. Court. I may, perhaps, further
assume that such a Committee will have authority to entertain all
subjects relative to the sanitary improvement of the City, and to make
thereon such recommendations as shall seem fit to them; and, further,
that they will make it their business to receive periodical
intelligence, as complete as possible, on all variations in the public
health, and on all circumstances likely to affect it.
* * * * *
In order that any Committee, acting for sanitary purposes within the
City, shall have a reasonable chance of success in its endeavours for
the public good, the following means of information will be necessary
for its use:--
* * * * *
1. That an account should be kept, corrected year by year, of every
house within the City; as to the area of building, the number of floors,
rooms, and windows; as to its ventilation; as to its drainage,
water-supply, and other facilities for cleanliness; as to its method of
occupation, and number of inhabitants:
* * * * *
2. That from this account there should be made out, at least twice
yearly, a list of houses and streets remaining in an objectionable
sanitary state; and a list, also, of such as may have been remedied to
the satisfaction of the Committee since the formation of their last
preceding list:
* * * * *
3. That, while trades injurious to health or offensive to their
neighbourhood are suffered to continue within the City, there should be
given periodical reports on the condition of such establishments, to the
end that they may be so maintained as to be least detrimental to the
public health:
* * * * *
4. That a record of every death registered as occurring in the
population of the City should lie before the Committee; and
* * * * *
5. I consider it quite indispensable, that they should likewise receive
the largest and most accurate returns which can be procured of all
sickness occurring among the poorer classes; and (particularly in
respect of all epidemic, endemic, and infectious disorders) that the
medical practitioner who communicates the fact of illness, should
likewise report the existence of any local causes, or other influences
of general operation, which have tended to produce, or are tending to
continue, such illness.
* * * * *
On the subject of returns of the nature last referred to, I have
already, on various occasions, submitted my opinion to the judgment of
your Hon. Court. A year ago, in the first Report which I had the honour
to make here, and in various discussions which during some months
followed the reception of that Report, I stated how necessary I deemed
such returns, for the purpose of guiding and justifying the various
recommendations which it would become my duty to lay before you. The
period which has since elapsed, including its three months of
pestilence, has furnished me with the strongest confirmation of those
views. As I formerly stated by anticipation, so now I repeat from
experience, that nothing deserving the name of sanitary administration
can exist in the City, without accurate periodical intelligence of all
such sickness (at least) as comes under parochial treatment; or without
such reports on the local sanitary conditions, and on other causes of
disease, as were desired to accompany that intelligence.
When the matter was previously under your consideration, it was argued
that the reception of such intelligence formed no part of your functions
as a Commission for draining, lighting, paving, and cleansing the City
of London; that all sanitary matters, beyond these and the like, were
foreign to your proper sphere of operation; and that your funds, raised
by rates from the citizens of London, could not with propriety be
applied to meet the expenses of such an arrangement. On this question of
jurisdiction and finance I shall, of course, hazard no opinion. I would
simply beg to repeat, with regard to so much of the matter as lies
within my own professional province, that the intelligence in question
is absolutely necessary for the present progress of sanitary measures
within the City; that no Health-Committee can exist for a month without
it; nor can any officer, having proper respect for his character,
consent to be considered responsible for the health of a population,
whose illnesses he learns only from their posthumous record in the
death-register.
During the recent prevalence of cholera, the Health-Committee of the
Common Council complied for the time with my recommendation, and
established a system of daily reports, rendered still more serviceable
by free personal intercourse between myself and the several gentlemen
having medical charge of the three City unions. What needed to be daily
during a period of pestilence, might fitly become a weekly communication
at all other times. I have already reported to the Health-Committee, and
I beg to reiterate here, that the advantages derived from that system of
communication were such as could have been attained in no other way.
I may remind you that each of the gentlemen referred to, serving under
the Poor Law, works within a certain small and definite district; that
he is therefore peculiarly competent to speak on the state of the
population in that district, on their habits and necessities, on their
customary condition of health, and on their liability to epidemic
disease; and that the total staff of these officers, taken collectively,
representing the medical practice of the whole city, can supply exactly
that kind of detailed and precise information which is most serviceable
to your Officer of Health, in guiding him to those more general and
comprehensive conclusions which it is his business to lay before you.
These gentlemen are the habitual medical attendants of the poorer
classes; day by day, in the unobtrusive beneficence of their calling,
they pass from house to house, and from court to court--the constant
recipients of complaint, or the constant observers of ground of
complaint--amid all that destitute population on whose condition you
require to be informed. They are in the constant presence of the
pestilences which reign in our worst localities; they are the chief
treaters of endemic disease within the City--of that disease which, by
its proportion, measures the success of sanitary changes, or indicates
their failure; and it has been the professional education of these
gentlemen, as it is their business, to trace such effects to their
causes. Their reports would be the authenticated statements of
experienced medical practitioners, familiarly conversant with their
several respective localities.
If it were your wish and object, with utter indifference to expense, to
organise the best scheme for procuring to yourselves from time to time a
succession of accurate and trustworthy reports on the state of health,
and condition of dwellings, in the several districts of the City;--if
you were willing to engage a large number of non-medical persons who
should give their whole time to the duty of exploring and reporting on
that state, I am persuaded that this expensive and cumbrous proceeding
would have a smaller measure of success than that which I submit to you,
and which consists essentially in availing yourselves of the local
knowledge and daily observations of a staff of officers, already
organised and in active occupation for the very purposes in question.
That such intelligence, embracing weekly returns from the eleven
parochial surgeons of the City of London, and including their comments
on the local causes of prevailing disease, would involve an annual
expenditure of money,[28]--and that this expenditure, sooner or later,
and in some form or other, would be derived from the rate-paying portion
of the community, are facts which cannot be doubted. But that the
expenditure would be a judicious one; that it is indispensable to the
effective working of any Health-Committee, or any Health-Officer within
the City; that it would be the first step to the mitigation of the
disorders reported on; that it would disclose evils which else must
escape recognition and remedy; that in a few years it would render our
general mortality of 3 per cent. on the entire population of the City a
matter of history and a warning, instead of its being, as now, a present
and awful reality; that in lessening sickness and death, it would stay
a large source of pauperism, would diminish the number of occasional and
habitual claimants of Union relief, and would become a measure of real
and considerable economy;--these are points on which, with the utmost
sense of official responsibility, I beg to record my deliberate
conviction.
[28] When the matter was last under consideration of the
Commissioners, it appeared that the expense of such an arrangement
would be about £250 annually.--J. S., 1854.
Accordingly, I have to recommend that any Committee, which may undertake
the administration of sanitary affairs for the City, shall be furnished
as completely as possible with information of the nature I have
specified.
* * * * *
Another element to which I think it necessary to advert, in connexion
with a future sanitary organisation for the City, is this,--that some
permanent arrangement should be made, by which the maintenance of
exterior and interior cleanliness, the enforcement of scavengers’
duties, the suppression of nuisances, and the like, should be brought
under habitual and systematic surveillance; one, by which all breaches
of your present or future sanitary regulations may be quickly detected,
and may be visited with their appropriate penalties as speedily and as
certainly as possible. I am induced the rather to bring this subject
before you, as complaints of scavengers’ duties being neglected have
reached me at every turn. I am informed that it is usual for them to
refuse to remove dirt and rubbish from houses, according to the terms of
their contract, except on the tenants’ payment of an additional
gratuity; and it must be obvious to your Hon. Court that the
arrangements which you have made by contract for this purpose are
virtually defeated, as regards the poorer population, when the removal
of refuse-matter is made contingent on the gift of beer-money by those
whose means are so restricted.
It is in respect of matters of this sort, and of such only, that I think
the services of the Police-Force might usefully be employed. Their want
of special education, and their employment in other duties, are
circumstances which appear to me quite conclusive for objecting to their
utilisation as sanitary reporters. But while I entertain the opinion
that their employment in the latter direction would be both fruitless
and inconvenient, I would submit that their numbers and their diffusion
through the City qualify them well to act against all causers of
nuisance, as they act against other offenders, both detectively and
preventively; and I would venture to repeat a suggestion, which I made
in January last, ‘that the police should consider it part of their duty,
to report on every nuisance within their knowledge, and on every
infraction of such sanitary rules as this Court may establish.’
* * * * *
Here, Gentlemen, terminates the list of subjects which, on this
occasion, I have thought it my duty to bring before you. Long as the
enumeration may have appeared, I can assure you that my present Report
bears a small proportion, in point of dimensions, to the very large and
very various mass of materials on which it is founded. In compressing it
within the narrowest limits consistent with intelligibility, and in
excluding from it nearly all details on the matters treated of, I have
consulted the convenience of your Hon. Court, notwithstanding the
greater labour and difficulty of execution which belong to the plan I
have adopted. At any time, in Court or in Committee, when you may wish
to pursue the subject, I shall be ready to enter at far greater length,
and with more elaborate minuteness, on any of those subjects which, at
the present opportunity, I have only sketched for your general
information.
* * * * *
In the matters which I have enumerated, some lie distinctly within your
province, as assigned by the Act of Parliament; while others may be
thought to lie, just as distinctly, without that province. In affairs
strictly under your jurisdiction, and within the present scope of the
law, there remains very much to achieve. The complete enforcement of
house-drainage, till every house washes itself into the sewer; the more
general distribution of water, till every individual within the City has
an abundant supply within his immediate reach; the effective
preservation of public cleanliness; the construction and maintenance of
sewerage, paving, lighting, for all the streets, courts and passages of
this great City;--these constitute an immense amount of responsibility
and labour. Those other objects to which I have referred, are partly
such as cannot be accomplished without the further interference of the
Legislature. It is a point solely for the discretion of your Hon. Court
to determine, how far you may be willing to enlarge the sphere of your
sanitary operations, and to undertake the difficulties of a new
campaign.
* * * * *
To your Officer of Health the Act of Parliament allows no such option.
‘Whereas the health of the population, especially of the poorer
classes, is frequently injured by the prevalence of epidemical and other
disorders,’ therefore it is appointed for his duty that he shall report
on whatsoever ‘injuriously affects the health of the inhabitants of the
City,’ and that he shall ‘point out the most efficacious mode of
checking or preventing the spread of contagious or other epidemic
disease.’ Actuated by obligation of the duty thus expressed in your Act
of Parliament, after full reflection on all that those expressions
imply, and with the deepest sense of the responsibility belonging to one
who is honoured with the task of advising the first Corporation of the
country in respect of its sanitary proceedings, I have been compelled,
in the course of my present Report, to trench upon many subjects which
do not customarily fall under your consideration, and which (as I have
stated) may by some be considered as utterly foreign to your
jurisdiction and province.
It rests with your Hon. Court to determine what course you will adopt in
respect of such departments of the great sanitary scheme;--whether you
will retain them under your consideration, and will assume the
responsibility of dealing with them in proportion to their magnitude and
importance, or will transfer them to the Court of Common Council for the
less restricted deliberation of that body.
Let me once more declare my profound conviction of their importance to
the health and welfare of the City.
To provide an inoffensive outfall for the sewerage of our vast
population; to render the river a source of unqualified advantage; to
give wide extension and sounder principles to the system of
water-supply; to suppress all trades and occupations which taint the
atmosphere with materials of organic decomposition; to abate the
nuisance of smoke; to provide the facilities for extramural interment,
and to procure the prohibition of all further burial amidst our living;
to improve the domestic arrangements of the poor, and to insure for them
an adequate supervision; to establish public baths and laundries, which
may offer the utmost facilities and inducement for the maintenance of
personal cleanliness; to hinder the occupation of houses which breed
pestilence; to destroy such as are irremediably hostile to health, and
to disperse the stifled population of courts and alleys; to substitute
for such slums as we hope to depopulate and destroy, but in open streets
and with perfect ventilation, houses and lodgings, which not only shall
offer to the labouring classes every convenience essential to health and
decency and comfort, but shall likewise serve as models of household
economy for the whole district in which they stand;--these, Gentlemen,
are the aims, briefly recapitulated, for the sake of which I have been
obliged, as it were casually in my Report, to touch on many subjects
perhaps foreign to your jurisdiction, but lying at least on the confines
of your province, and remaining with you now either to retain or to
transfer.[29]
[29] Perhaps, to make these passages intelligible, the reader should
be apprised that the business of the Corporation is considered in a
great variety of Committees, which thus have their several and
particular provinces. Of the many matters adverted to, as foreign to
the ordinary functions of the Commission of Sewers, some might belong
to the _City-Lands_ Committee, some to the _Improvement_, some to the
_Finance_, some to the _Navigation_, some to the _Markets_ Committee,
and so on. Obviously it would have been out of my place to touch on
these details of jurisdiction; and I therefore urged only the
essentially _municipal_ character of the several improvements I
advocated.--J. S., 1854.
* * * * *
That the subject of sanitary improvement in its widest scope, and with
all that even incidentally relates to it, is one which, according to the
ancient constitution of the City, rightfully belongs to the authorities
of the Corporation, in some one or other of their municipal
relations--that it belongs to them equally as their privilege and their
duty, cannot for a moment be questioned. And if your Hon. Court should
determine on a negative opinion as regards yourselves, and should decide
on transferring these matters to the Common Council, I venture to hope
that your influence may accompany them in their course, and may procure
for them the consideration they deserve.
* * * * *
Gentlemen, the history of the City of London is full of great examples
of public service. It records many a generous struggle for the Country
and for the Constitution; it records a noble patronage of arts and
letters; it records imperial magnificence and Christian liberality; but
never, within the scope of its annals, has the Corporation had so grand
an opportunity as now for the achievement of an unlimited good. Because
of the City’s illustrious history, and because of the vast wealth and
power which have enabled it so often to undertake the largest measures
of public utility and patriotism,--therefore it is, that the
expectations of the country may well be fixed on the City of London in
regard of this, the distinguishing movement of modern times--the
movement to improve the social condition, and to prolong the lives of
the poor.
Those who are familiar with the many abiding monuments of your civic
munificence and splendor, may well expect that, in approaching this
all-important question, the counsels of the City will be swayed by high
and generous considerations.
In the great objects which sanitary science proposes to itself,--in the
immense amelioration which it proffers to the physical, to the social,
and indirectly to the moral condition of an immense majority of our
fellow-creatures, it transcends the importance of all other sciences,
and in its beneficent operation seems most nearly to embody the spirit
and to fulfil the intentions of practical Christianity.