An essay on the means of insurance against the casualties of sickness, decrepitude, and mortality: comprising an article reprinted from the Westminster Review (No. XVIII) for April 1828, with additional notes and corrections / [Anon].

  • Edwin Chadwick
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the means of insurance against the casualties of sickness, decrepitude, and mortality: comprising an article reprinted from the Westminster Review (No. XVIII) for April 1828, with additional notes and corrections / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from them are liable, information essential for endowments and for providing for marriages and families. The attention of the Committee was much occupied on these topics, yet but little in- are marked by variations in the health of the prisoners. The like discre¬ pancies in diet are observable in the dietaries prescribed by medical men to the inmates of workhouses within the same district. And on examination I have found that the ordinary observation of one or two prisons, or of one or two workhouses, which is the usual extent of experience of a medical man, does not suffice for the establishment of any conclusion (which can be termed accurate) as to whether a given amount of sickness in such places is the effect solely of a certain quantity or quality of diet, it not being al¬ lowable to make experiments^ although such experiments might be safely made with different diets upon the same classes of prisoners. * The agricultural labourers of this country are on the whole a strong body of men. Notwithstanding many defects in their modes of life, as to the other essentials of life—simple and sufficient diet, warmth of clothing and lodging, and ventilation, including a circulation of air which is warm as well as pure, they are, comparatively to other labourers, a healthy class. That the agricultural labourers are on the whole more healthy than the pre¬ ceding generation of labourers, is proved by the encreased duration of life amongst them as shewn by the mortuary registers. ‘ This being so, the question presented itself, whether an encreased amount of food to those who had less labour,—namely, paupers and prisoners,—was requisite to maintain a fair average degree of health amongst them. The dietaries of this class appeared, however, to have been prescribed without re¬ ference to any standard. ^ The governors of several of the workhouses where the paupers were al¬ lowed a high diet stated to me that the change of diet on the first entrance of paupers into the house sometimes proved too much for them, and “ car¬ ried them off.'’ From the statements made by medical men, it appeared that in such houses acute disease was often rife and fatal. The number of these statements with reference to large classes of persons appeared to me to establish the conclusion that the heavier diets are amongst the least healthy; but inasmuch as no account that I could find is ever kept of the sickness prevalent at any of the workhouses, I was unable to obtain any pre¬ cise results on the subject. ‘ On further enquiry, I found, however, that a general account of the sick¬ ness and mortality which occurs in each gaol throughout the country is annually returned to His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Depart¬ ment, in compliance with the regulations of the Gaol Act. Upon an exami¬ nation of these returns, I found frequent instances where the average amount of sickness bore a proportion to the amount of diet. Where the diet was encreased in point of quantity on account of the prisoners being subjected to hard labour, there the sickness also encreased. These results led me to a further examination of the subject. ‘ There are returns sent annually from 128 gaols and prisons in England and Wales; and on an examination of the returns for three years, 1830, 1831, and 1832, it appearsnhat the total number of commitments averages no less than 97,279. The total number of persons in the gaols at ani/ one time appears to be about 25,000. The average number of persons sick each year is 9,044, or 9^ per cent, on the whole number of commitments.
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