[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Southwark, The Vestry of the Parish of St. George the Martyr].

  • St. George the Martyr (Southwark, London, England). Parish Council.
Date:
1875
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Southwark, The Vestry of the Parish of St. George the Martyr]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/33 (page 21)
    Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1874 —5. 21 A writer quoting from May hew on the London Poor, says, that there is disclosed here in London a system of depravity, atrocity, and enormity which certainly cannot be paralleled in any nation however barbarous ; in any age however dark. It is the duty of the Government to punish crime, and with a just inflexible rigorous ness; yet, this can only be done at an enormous outlay, and with a wide-spread complicated machinory: how much loss the cost would be, and how much more humane, the endeavour to prevent it. If the laws of nature are ignorantly neglected, or selfishly broken we must suffer the penalty: and crime is one of the bitter results. From this penalty there is no escape. The laws of nature are nothing but the goodwill of God expressed in facts. I often wonder what many of the owners of property think man was created for, ex cept indeed that he should bo housed in foul wretched dwellings, in order that money may be put in their purses, and so they may reap where they have not sown. A grim kind of harvest that will prove. Surely the owners have neither humanity nor justice on their side, when they allow their houses to become hotbeds for the fostering and spreading of disease moral and physical, and in which it is impossible either to maintain cleanliness, or support health, or practise morality. There are thousands of such houses. I look forward hopefully to the benefits which will follow the carrying out of the Education Act; and if all the good we fondly expect should not follow, yet the passing of such a measure is subject for sincerest congratulation. Education asserts the greatest of modern writers, stands on the basis of everlasting duty. Heavier wrong than neglect of this, is not done under the sun. It lasts from year to year from century to century; the blinded sire slaves himself out, and loaves a blinded son; and men made in the image of God, continue as two-legged beasts of labour; and in the largest empire of the world, it is debate whether a small portion of the Revenue of one day shall after thir teen centuries be laid out on it, or not laid out on it. We may rejoice that the state of things which a few years back called forth this vehement and indignant protest does not exist. But merely reading and writing, and working out a sum in arithmetic will hardly suffice. The developement of the intellect alone will not go far in improving man's charac ter, whilst it may aid him in the practice of higher class crime. Teaching must include the developement of all the moral powers inherent in man; also the demonstrations of those laws by which he is governed as a social being, as well as those by which his health is regulated. He must be shown what is the end and object of life and the way by which they may be]best reached. And, so, the bonds of a stupid and sullen thraldom broken he may advance onwards in the race, and the raw world be drilled for the march of mind. I would not have you suppose that what I am now stating to you, is foreign to your duties as Vestrymen, and to the purpose for which you meet here. It is the very heart and core of them. The only true and lasting foundation upon which the glory and safety of a nation can be built, must be upon the cultivation of the moral and physical powers belonging to man; and we may remember that sanitary science is capacious enough to embrace the whole of such cultivation, and minute enough to carry out its every detail. With the great Dramatist of the old days the Sanitarian may say, I deem nothing foreign to me which belongs to man.