Half a century of sanitary progress and its results / [Henry Franklin Parsons].
- Parsons, H. Franklin (Henry Franklin), 1846-1913
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Half a century of sanitary progress and its results / [Henry Franklin Parsons]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![( quarantine; but the course adopted has had the dis¬ advantage that, when the question of hospital provision for infectious cases came to be taken up, it was done by the State for Poor Law purposes, and was thus started on a wrong track, as a measure for the relief of necessitous individuals rather than as one for the protection of the public health. The Public Health Act, 1848, created a central board, the General Board of Health, with large powers, and authorised the formation, in any place of a Local Board of Health, either upon the petition of not less than a tenth of the inhabitants or, where the average death-rate for a period of seven years exceeded 23 per 1,000, upon the initiative of the General Board of Health. It gave legal effect to the various recommendations of the Health of Towns Commission, and made the necessary financial and administrative provisions for carrying them out; and its clauses form in the main the basis of the Public Health Act, 1875, now in force. It applied, however, for the most part only in places where ]ocal boards of health had been formed, but one clause (§ 50) provided that in any parish or place containing less than 2,000 inhabitants the rate¬ payers in public meeting assembled might, by a majority of three-fifths, take steps for the cleansing, covering, and filling up of any pond, pool, open ditch, sewer, drain, or place containing, or used for the collection of, any drainage, filth, water, matter, or thing of an offensive nature or likely to be prejudicial to health ; the making or improvement of a sewer, or the digging of a well, or providing a pump for the public use of the inhabitants. The work was to be done by the churchwardens, after approval at a second public meeting of ratepayers, at the cost of the poor-rate. The cumbrous procedure of this clause appears, however, to have been little resorted to in rural places. The General Board of Health, as at first constituted, was a very able and vigorous body, but being too much in advance of public opinion, its constitution and powers were altered in 1854; and in 1858 it came to an end, its functions being divided between the Privy Council and the Home Office. This arrangement continued until 1871, when the Local Government Board was formed with the duty of supervising the administration both of the Poor Law and of the Sanitary Acts. The facilities for obtaining local self-government by the formation of local boards were extended by the Local Government Act of 1858,— too much so, indeed, for it became the fashion in some](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30597092_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
