Charles James Blomfield, bishop of London. Mezzotint by W. Ward, 1827, after S. Lane.

Blomfield was inter alia chairman of the Poor Law Commission, whose report led to the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. "Blomfield was initially an enthusiastic advocate of the act, arguing that it would return the poor to robust independence. He engaged in a bitter exchange with Bishop Henry Phillpotts over the bastardy clauses when the latter complained that they victimized the mothers of illegitimate children, Blomfield arguing that the only relevant consideration was whether the clauses provided an effective check on immorality. Blomfield never publicly defended the act later, however, and this seems to reflect a return to a more interventionist approach. In 1842 he argued that the state should regulate collieries and urban life; in 1847 he backed the ten-hours movement. Blomfield came to acknowledge that improvement of the physical environment of the poor was probably a precondition of their evangelization. It was at his initiative that Edwin Chadwick and the Poor Law Commissioners were instructed in 1839 to compile a Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population, and throughout the 1840s Blomfield supported associations and legislation to improve sanitation in urban slums. In 1848 he strongly backed Chadwick over the Public Health Act, and in 1854 fought unsuccessfully to preserve the Board of Health" (Oxford dictionary of national biography)