On sanitary legislation and administration in England : an address, portions of which were read before the Public-Health Department of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at its Inaugural Meeting, held at Birmingham, in October 1857 / by Henry Wyldbore Rumsey.

  • Rumsey, Henry Wyldbore, 1809-1876.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On sanitary legislation and administration in England : an address, portions of which were read before the Public-Health Department of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at its Inaugural Meeting, held at Birmingham, in October 1857 / by Henry Wyldbore Rumsey. 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.

    20/86 (page 12)
    arrive at an agreement about some specific evil., the Act pro- vides no method for united procedure. The subordinate officer, who is merely meant to ferret out the commoner nuisances, although dignified with the imposing title of “ Sanitary Inspector,” is appointed only in a very small number of these petty jurisdictions, and in a still smaller number does he act boldly and efficiently. There is no public prosecutor independent of the “local authority” (which of course often contains the more influential nuisance-factors of the place or their very good friends) to bring crying evils under the action of the law or the notice of a higher au- thority. And, in fine, the absence of any provision to compel this numerous host of little boards and vestries to perform the duties which they are empowered to perform/ renders the Act a nullity. Composition of Local Boards.—Peculiar to this country is its method of constituting local administrative bodies,—a method which immensely aggravates the evils inseparable from limited town -j urisdictions. The sole personal qualifications, as we all know, which the law requires of any person elected as member of a Local Board, are—that he resides in the district, “ or within seven miles thereof,” and that he is either possessed of property to a certain amount, or rated upon a certain annual value as an occupier in the district. Every town-councillor, also, must be a burgess of the borough. The result is that an over- whelming majority of members belong to one class of the community—a class consisting of persons whose pecuniary interests are too often concerned in maintaining density of population, and other local causes of insalubrity and social degeneracy, and who therefore seldom escape the moral infec- tion of the spot. Neither the Municipal-Corporations Act, nor the Public- Health Act, nor the Metropolitan-Management Act, provide any security for a fair representation of all classes of society. Nor does the law permit a proportionate addition of persons selected on account of position, liberal education, philanthropic 1 “ Parliament may confer powers; but where their exercise conflicts with private interests, and is not secured by penalty, they will remain a dead letter.”—Scrutator, Gloucestershire Chronicle, Oct. 24, 1857.