It were only a statement of the concurrent opinion of the commissioners of police, of magistrates, of medical officers, and of the guardians charged with the administration of the poor’s rates, to represent the urgent necessity of legislative provisions for the general adoption of similar measures throughout the country.
IX.—RECAPITULATION OF CONCLUSIONS.
The last cited instance of the practical operation of measures for the abatement of the nuisances attendant on common lodging-houses may also be submitted as an instance of the advantages derivable from the extension of such fields of inquiries as the present. On each of the chief points included in it there would have been a loss of what I hope will be deemed valuable corroborative information, had the inquiry been confined either to England or to Scotland. The observation of the important productive use of the refuse of the city of Edinburgh would have been of comparatively little value as evidence leading to practical applications, apart from the observation of what is accomplished by the practical application of science to sewerage and drainage for the immediate and cheapest removal of all the refuse of towns by water through closed drains afforded by the operation in the Holborn and Finsbury division of the metropolis. It may be stated confidently that, if the inquiry could conveniently have had still further extension as to time and place, the information would have been strengthened and rendered more complete. From incidental facts I have met with, I am led to believe that the whole of the effects which are the subject of the present report would have been still more strikingly displayed in many parts of Ireland.
After as careful an examination of the evidence collected as I have been enabled to make, I beg leave to recapitulate the chief conclusions which that evidence appears to me to establish.
First, as to the extent and operation of the evils which are the subject of the inquiry:—
That the various forms of epidemic, endemic, and other disease caused, or aggravated, or propagated chiefly amongst the labouring classes by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings prevail amongst the population in every part of the kingdom, whether dwelling in separate houses, in rural villages, in small towns, in the larger towns—as they have been found to prevail in the lowest, districts of the metropolis.
That such disease, wherever its attacks are frequent, is always found in connexion with the physical circumstances above specified, and that where those circumstances are removed by drainage, proper cleansing, better ventilation, and other means of diminishing atmospheric impurity, the frequency and intensity of such disease is abated; and where the removal of the noxious agencies appears to be complete, such disease almost entirely disappears.
That high prosperity in respect to employment and wages, and various and abundant food, have afforded to the labouring classes no exemptions from attacks of epidemic disease, which have been as frequent and as fatal in periods of commercial and manufacturing prosperity as in any others.
That the formation of all habits of cleanliness is obstructed by defective supplies of water.
That the annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation are greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the country has been engaged in modern times.