Report of the General Board of Health on the administration of the Public Health Act and the Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Acts from 1846 to 1854.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the General Board of Health on the administration of the Public Health Act and the Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Acts from 1846 to 1854. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    plied the waste of life caused by the excessive, and for the most part, preventible disease of towns. There is every appearance that the drain upon the strength and working ability of the country thus set up, will increase rather than diminish. It is guided and pro- moted by letters and pecuniary assistance sent by relations who have gone, to those who remain. It will probably be facilitated by the cheapening of transport, and by its increased comfort, speed, and safety. To the least ignorant and abject of the population, who now live in the filthy and crowded habitations of our neglected districts, and who see no prospect of improvements that are likely to reach them, the representation of wages to be obtained, higher than the highest town wages that can be looked for at home ; the cheaper and better residence in an open country, and of land within the means of their own acquisition, must hold out a powerful temptation to try their fortune in a new sphere. In the mean time, as far as the effect of the emigration upon those who remain in unimproved localities and dwellings has yet been observed, increased wages bring only increased intemperance, which gives additional force to the noxious agencies by which they are surrounded. The last return of the Registrar General showed a marked diminution of the total amount of births, but if the average rate of births should be main- tained, or even increased, it becomes a consideration of the greatest import how the social and economical conse- quences of the extraordinary drain upon adult life are to be counteracted. We believe this can only be done by removing from unhealthy districts the removeable causes of disease, and substituting the essential conditions of healthy existence. We feel it to be our duty urgently to represent these cir- cumstances as demanding early measures of co-extensive magnitude j for if the present rate of emigration continue, and the physical state of the population be not amended, both with respect to the duration of life and the physical strength of those that survive, we shall shortly be in actual want of able-bodied men, for the social, industrial, and military services of the country. With reference to the money loss consequent on this state of things, on comparing the different rates of mor- tality in well conditioned and ill conditioned localities, it would appear that, taking into account the loss of labour, the expense of sickness, and the excess of funerals,