After finishing this Report, my grandfather set to work to obtain exact statistics as to fever in other parts of London; and by the next year (1839) tables had been compiled, which proved, by a wider range of experience, the truths he had again and again brought forward. Once more he wrote a Report to the Poor Law Commissioners—of whom Mr (afterwards Sir Edwin) Chadwick was one—pointing out the facts which were proved by these figures and the duty of acting on them.[[16]]
Such accounts as those given by the three physicians appointed by the Poor Law Board to inquire, could not pass unnoticed. The press, not only in London but in all parts of England, took up the subject. Public men began to be roused.
At first the facts were doubted. It was difficult to believe that such a dreadful state of things could exist; but attention was awakened, and inquiry followed.
The Marquis of Normanby, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, was much impressed with what he had read, but he could hardly conquer a belief that there must have been some exaggeration. My grandfather took him to see some of the places in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel which the Report had described. Lord Normanby was deeply moved, as every one must have been who was brought to realise the kind of dwellings which were all that these people had for homes. "So far," he said, "from any exaggeration having crept into the descriptions which had been given, they had not conveyed to my mind an adequate idea of the truth."
Lord Ashley, too, always in the forefront to relieve the sufferings of the poor, was taken by my grandfather on two occasions to see these regions personally; and from that time forth he became one of the most ardent supporters of the Sanitary Cause, working strenuously for it both in and out of Parliament.[[17]] In a letter to a friend my grandfather writes:—
"Finsbury Square, 1841.
"I have just returned from Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, over which I have been taking Lord Ashley and his brother, and I think they have received an impression which will be lasting, and which will stimulate them to exert themselves for the removal of some of the evils which they have witnessed."
The Bishop of London had the honour of being the first to bring the question before Parliament. In an earnest and eloquent speech made in the House of Lords during the session of 1839, he moved for an extension of such inquiries as the Poor Law Board had caused to be made in London, to other towns in the United Kingdom.
It must have seemed to my grandfather a glorious moment when the principles he had so long advocated were for the first time recognised—when the country began to hear with surprise and shame of the existing state of things—and when the suffering, which he felt so deeply, seemed about to be relieved.
The movement had now begun. Surely it would go quickly, since the saving of thousands of lives each year depended on its progress?