The public health a public question. First report of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association on the chief evils affecting the sanitary condition of the metropolis, with suggestions for their removal; and containing the proceedings of the public meeting held at Freemason's Hall, Feb. 6th, 1850.

  • Metropolitan Sanitary Association (London, England)
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The public health a public question. First report of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association on the chief evils affecting the sanitary condition of the metropolis, with suggestions for their removal; and containing the proceedings of the public meeting held at Freemason's Hall, Feb. 6th, 1850. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    meats which increased knowledge, ability, and appliances have placed within our reach. The condition of the dwellings of the poor and of the industrial classes is a chief cause of the excess of deaths and of the prevalence of disease, poverty, immorality, and crime in the metropolis. The thousands of facts which came to light during the house visitation carried on all over the metropolis during the late epidemic, confirmed the opinion formed from previous experience: that, in a large proportion of instances, a very few inexpensive structural changes would suffice to produce great and permanent benefits. The physical circumstances in and around a dwelling are a measure of the health and comfort of the tenants. Where there is manifest unfitness for healthy existence there can be no home—no permanent happiness—no self-respect, or moral elevation of character. Disease must come, and with it a whole train of depressing, vitiating, and pauperizing influences. Some of the elements, which render the dwellings of the poor utterly unfit for continued healthy existence, are, others are not, susceptible of immediate relief. It is to the former class this Association would at present address itself. Most of the dwellings thus unfitted for healthy existence entail most grievous and oppressive burdens on the public in the shape of charities —especially fever and small-pox hospitals, and workhouse establish¬ ments—besides charges for widowhood, orphanage, and poor-rates. These charges together are, in many cases, much greater than the actual value of the property which has produced such results. Whole rows and blocks of houses, courts and alleys, are so notorious for producing disease and pauperism, that the overseers and parochial medical officers are never absent from them, and some of the inhabitants, or their widows or orphans, are always to be found in the workhouse, burdening the rates. Dr. Gavin states, at ISTo. —, New Tyssen Street, “ I found a new family entering upon their tenancy. Three previous families had been successively removed to the workhouse in consequence of typhus fever. The landlord at the time of my visit had commenced some inadequate changes in his premises; but these changes, it is to be noticed, were not commenced till three families had been successively stricken down by fever, and had become burdens on the parish. “ Mount Square, Bethnal Green, five and twenty years ago was known