Address of Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., as vice president of the Public Health Section to the General Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Glasgow, September 29th, 1860.

  • Edwin Chadwick
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., as vice president of the Public Health Section to the General Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Glasgow, September 29th, 1860. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    lations, tlieir death rate would be reduced to 4, aud iu some places to 2| per 1000, aud their sickness iu proportion, as is stated to be the case with soldiers Avhen sent into the Irish prisons, where they have no longer meat rations. The highest hope, at present, of the sanitary reformer, would be realized if he could induce the House of Commons to take the same concern for the sanitary condition of working and honest labourers and their families,to insist upon their habitations being cleared of the taint of the middeustead and the cesspool, and supplied with pure water, and iwotected from overcrowding, as is the prisoner’s cell. This can only be done projDerly by public means. By the break- ing of a drain a short time ago, the water which supplied the prisoners of the Salford prison was polluted with such matter as that which is frequently allowed to pollute the sources of the water supply of popula- tions, and a dysenteric attack was occasioned amongst the imisouers, though no death. There was a public sensation created by the extra- ordinary event, and an inquiry into the cause. But within the same registration district there passed without notice in the year 1856, 248 deaths from diarrhoea in the sub-district of Salford; and 472 in Manches- ter amongst the general population, ascribed, in Dr. Greenhow’s recent Report, to “the monster sanitaiy defect” of that city—“the effluvia of middensteads ”—from which the prisoners are protected. The efflciency of the protection, by the removal of the cesspool taint from the dwelling, is proved by the ordinary health of the prisoners in that prison—though a large proportion of them are brought in sick, aud the site of the prison is washed by a river which, by local neglect, has been converted into an offensive sewer—as com])ared with the health of factory operatives of the same ages. The following is a statistical table which I obtained iu relation to this same prison and district:— Average Annual Sickness in Days and Decimals. Ages. 16 to 21 21 to 26 26 to 31 31 to 36 36 to 41 41 to 46 Amongst Factory Operatives. 4-42 4-91 6-88 3- 85 4- 13 5- 09 Amongst the Prisoners in Salford Prison. 3T0 1- 64 2- 72 2-63 •85 •51 So certain will the chief sanitary data noAv be found when compe- tently examined, as to enable a contractor to contract for tlie attainment of given sanitary results; and he ought, with the requisite powers, to contract for the attainment of given ends. Ho ought to contract for the reduction of the sickness and death rate of such a city as Glasgow by at least one-third, at an expense of about one jienny a week per head of the entire population;—a charge less than the insurance charge for the alleviation of the present excess of sickness and mortality. If the expense of cleansing, and other expenses attendant upon the poison pits—the cesspools—were capitalised in
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