Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain : with appendices.
- Edwin Chadwick
- Date:
- 1842
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain : with appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![REPORT ON THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE LABOURING POPULATION, AND ON THE MEANS OF ITS IMPROVEMENT. London, May, 1842. Gilmtlemen,—Since my special attention was directed to the In- quiry as to the chief lemovable cii-cumstances affecting the health of the poorer classes of the populatioiij I have availed myself of every opportunity to collect information respecting them. In company with Dr. Arnott I visited Edinburgh and Glasgow, and inspected those residences that were pointed out by the local au- thorities as the chief seats of disease. I also visited Dumfries. An inspection of similar districts in Spitalfields, Manchester, Leeds, and JNIacclesfield, and inquiries formerly made under the Commission of Poor Law Inquiry, and inspections of the condition of the residences of the poorer classes in parts of Berkshire, Sussex, and Hertfordshire, had supplied me with means of com- parison. Abandoning any inquiries as to remedies, strictly so called, or the treatment of diseases after their appearance, I have directed the examinations of witnesses and the reports of medical officers chiefly to collect information of the best means available as preventives of the evils in question. On the documentary evidence of the medical officers, and on the examinations of wit- nesses, aided by personal inspections, I have the honour to report as follows:— Partial descriptions of the condition of the labouring classes, in respect to their residences and the habits which influence their health, afford but a faint conception of the evils which are the subject of inquiry. If only particular instances, or some groups of individual cases be adduced, the erroneous impression might be created tliat they were cases of comparatively infrequent occurrence. But the following tabular return made up from the registration of the causes of death in England and Wales, which is the most com- plete yet attained, will give a sufficiently correct conception of the extent of the evils in question, when illustrated by the evidence of eye-witnesses, the medical officers whose duty it has been to attend on the spot and alleviate them. The table comprehends the abstract of the returns of the deaths from the chief diseases, which the medical officers consider to be the most powerfully in- fluenced by the physical circumstances under which the population is placed—as the external and internal condition of their dwell- ings, drainage, and ventilation. To the Poor Law Commissioners. [!•] B](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21307313_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
