Transcript Public Health and the Growth of Towns

The Growth of Towns, Living
Conditions & Public Health
Population Growth
 Britain’s population doubled in the
50 years between 1801 & 1851,
from 10.5 to 21 Million
 By 1901 it had doubled again to 42
Million
 There had been nothing like this
before
The Growth of Towns
 This growing population crowded
into expanding industrial towns
 This process is called Urbanisation
 People were driven away from the
countryside because of Enclosure
 They were drawn to the towns to
find work in the new factories
Urbanisation
 Places like Manchester, Liverpool,
Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford, Glasgow
and Sheffield grew into huge cities in a
few years
 This growth was unplanned
 It was also unregulated- there were no
laws about planning, building or
sanitation
 The main political belief of the time –
Laissez-faire – government should not
interfere
19th C. Attitudes
 Laissez-faire- most politicians
believed that things would work out
better if government didn’t interfere
 They believed it was wrong to
interfere with the rights of landlords
 They felt that the poor were to blame
for their own living conditions
 There was little understanding of
what caused disease
Living Conditions
 Housing for the poor was Jerry-Built
(badly built)
 Poor foundations, damp walls,leaky
roofs, poor ventilation
 Massive overcrowding, thousands lived
in filthy cellars
 Back-to-backs took up less space and
crowded more people in
 Courts were accessed by narrow alleys –
little sunlight penetrated
Back-to-backs
Back-to-backs
 Back-to-backs could crowd more
people in, more cheaply
 They were built next factories
 Families often shared with other
workers
 Cooking facilities were minimal
Sewage, Sanitation and Refuse
 This picture of Jacob’s Island, East London, is
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typical
The privvies(toilets) emptied straight into the
river
Elsewhere sewerage was simply left in cess pits
or open sewers
Sometimes the cess pit was emptied by Night
Men who made a living selling manure to local
farmers
In rain, the filth washed through the alleys and
into the cellars
Animal dung added to the stench
Other refuse was not collected
Water Supply
 Water was drawn from rivers or wells
 Raw sewerage leaked from un-lined cess-
pits and contaminated the wells
 Most towns used the rivers as a vast
sewer
 Water pumps were shared by hundreds of
people
 Water was dirty and carried many germs
Dangers to Health
 The cartoon of 1858 shows the Thames bringing 3
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deadly diseases to London
Smoke form factories and chimneys caused lung
disorders
Uncooked meat and impure water caused
diarrhoea and dysentery
People had lice because they couldn’t keep clean
– the lice spread Typhus
Rats spread disease
Diseases like TB spread easily in overcrowded
conditions
Cholera
 There were serious cholera epidemics in
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1831-2, 1848, & 1854, killing thousands
Cholera was terrifying. It was unknown in
Britain before 1831. The symptoms were
frightening – diarrhoea and vomiting,
dehydration, pain, fever. Patients turned
blue!
No-one knew the cause
No-one knew how to treat it
It killed the rich as well as the poor
Edwin Chadwick’s Report 1842
 Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Population,
1842, was deeply shocking
 It was a thorough, statistical survey of living
conditions throughout Britain
 The most startling evidence was on average
life expectancies
 In Manchester 50% of babies died before
they were 5
 The average age of death in Manchester
was 17 for a labourer, and only 38 for a welloff middle class professional
The Public Health Act 1848
 Shocked by Cholera and Chadwick’s Report
Parliament passed the first Public Health
Act in 1848
 The Act set up a General Board of Health
with the power to create local Boards of
Health
 BUT, the act did not compel towns to take
responsibility for drainage, sewerage, refuse
and water
 The “Great Stink” in London in 1858, led to
London’s sewage being dumped
downstream, instead of in the middle of the
Thames!
Dr John Snow
 Read p 108-9 and do the questions p 109
Edwin Chadwick
 Now do the Source exercises on p116-7
Robert Koch
 Read about Koch and Pacini on p 122-3: Who should
get the credit for beating cholera?
 Do question p 123
Dr John Snow and Cholera
 During the 1854 Cholera epidemic in
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London John Snow persuaded the
authorities to remove the handle from the
water pump an the corner of Broad Street,
Soho
He was convinced that cholera was not
caused by miasma
Soon afterwards the epidemic stopped
He believed he had proved that the disease
was spread by contaminated water
He produced a detailed map of the
epidemic and became famous for
conducting a proper scientific enquiry
based on observation
Dr John Snow and Cholera
 After collecting his evidence Snow got the pump handle removed:
the deaths stopped
 A cesspool was discovered one metre from the pump: it had a
cracked lining allowing the contents to seep into the water
Slow Progress 1848-1875
 The so-called Dirty Party continued to argue that
government should follow “laissez-faire”
principles
 The poor were blamed for their living conditions,
but Chadwick argued that poor living conditions
caused poverty
 Edwin Chadwick quarreled with the doctors and
was unpopular
 The problem seemed too vast to cope with and
still no-one knew what caused disease till
Pasteur discovered germs in 1861
The Public Health Acts of 1875
 Primeminister Benjamin Disraeli (1874-
80) passed two important reforms:1. The Public Health Act 1875 which
compelled towns to provide clean water,
drains and sewers
2. The Artizans Dwellings Act 1875 which
allowed Local authorities to take over
and pull down slums
 There was still a lot to do!
Joseph Chamberlain
Mayor of Birmingham 1872-6
 Chamberlain used the new legal
powers (1875) to pull down 40
acres of slums in the middle of
Birmingham. He replaced them
with Corporation Street
 But, Chamberlain took no steps to
re-house the poor who simply
moved into even more overcrowded districts
Other Improvers
 Titus Salt moved his workers out of
Bradford and built the model town of
Saltaire (picture)
 George Cadbury built model village of
Bournville for his Birmingham workers
 William Lever built model town of Port
Sunlight for his “Sunlight Soap” workers
 George Peabody founded the Peabody
Trust which built good apartment blocks for
working people
 Octavia Hill bought and repaired slums in
London
 -Read p114-5 do question p115
Conclusions
 The problems of poor living conditions and public
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health were not solved in the 19thC.
The problem was very big
There was ignorance about the causes of disease
The Government was reluctant to move away from
“Laissez-faire”
Local government had few powers
Politicians did not want to put up rates and taxes
to pay for drains, water, paving, etc…
The problem was closely linked to POVERTY, and
there was no 19thC solution to this