It is a serious mistake to suppose that sanitary arrangements are
required only for London and other large cities. Few small towns or
even villages are exactly what they should be as regards health.
Villages, indeed, by having no jurisdiction, are in many cases far
more unhealthy than populous towns. We could point out a village of a
few hundred inhabitants--a pretty place to look at, at a
distance--where there is much mortality among infants and others in
consequence of foul gutters and bad drainage. In a small pamphlet,
forming an appeal to the ratepayers of Keswick on this subject, there
occur the following observations respecting the state of a place
called Braithwaite, which we candidly believe might apply to a hundred
other villages in England, and more particularly Scotland:--'The
village of Braithwaite, for example, contains, in proportion to its
population, more dirt, disease, and death than any decent town. It is
one of the most romantic and filthy villages in England, and yet it
might easily be made one of the cleanest and neatest. There are lanes,
alleys, and courts in almost all small towns and villages, in which
the mortality is greater far than that of our great towns; nay, in
hamlets, and isolated farmhouses in this, as in many other country
districts, there is often more sickness in proportion to the
population than in cities; and I could point out within a circuit of a
few miles, localities in which, during the last few years, scrofula,
small-pox, measles, and typhus fever have left their ravages; and
which, with proper care and cleanliness, might, I firmly believe, have
escaped. But that disease, and especially infectious disease, haunts
all ill-drained, ill-cleansed, and ill-ventilated places in both town
and country, there are now few intelligent persons that require to be
convinced; and the question has come to be with the well-informed part
of the public, as it has long been the question with medical men--has
not the time now arrived to _compel_ those who harbour the filth and
the contagion that carry off one-half of mankind, to expel those
enemies to the human race? The innumerable statistical inquiries of
the last ten years on this subject, all go to prove that dirt,
squalor, close air, and stagnant water, are the causes of one-half the
mortality of mankind in civilised countries. The majority of thinking
people of all classes--and these, though a small minority of mankind,
are the directors of every great social movement--are coming to see
that we must proceed with this sanitary business at once; and that, if
not by mild means, then by a little wholesome compulsion, we must
oblige the owners of property haunted by death and contagion, to yield
to the demands of society. If a man may not harbour a ferocious
bull-dog in his alley, is he to keep a noisome ditch running at large
there?--and if he may not hold a main of fighting cocks, is he to keep
cholera and typhus in his house? For my part, I cannot see, if a
justice of the peace can stop a man from knocking me down with a
bludgeon, why he should not be authorised to interfere to save me from
a typhus fever; and if he can prevent boys from endangering the lives
of passengers by firing guns on the high roads, why he should not also
be enabled to forbid the open sewers and other nuisances, which, if
not so noisy, are even more dangerous. A railway company pays heavily
for the lives and limbs of passengers sacrificed by the neglect or
rashness of its officials--should not a town be equally liable for the
losses caused by a public violation of the laws of health? We move
slowly in this neighbourhood, disliking changes, and hold strongly,
while the rest of the world is advancing, to the old ideas; yet even
Wordsworth's consecration of this sentiment to Cumberland--
"Hail usages of pristine mould,
And ye that guard them, mountains old!"
can scarcely apply to bad drainage and ventilation.' We should think
not. There is a scandalous deficiency in the ordinary institutes of
the country on this important subject of town and village cleaning!