You cannot disclose to them the suffering you have endured on your beds of sickness, and by which your wives and children have been hurried to their early graves—there is no column in the tables of the Registrar-General which can show that; but you can tell them that you know, and you can remind them that they admit, that by proper sanitary regulations the same duration of life may be extended to you and your families that is at present enjoyed by professional persons, and that it is possible to obtain for the whole of a town population at least such an average duration of life as is already experienced in some parts of it. In your workshops, in your clubs, in your institutes, obtain signatures to your petitions: get every labourer, every artisan, every tradesman whom you can influence, to sign petitions. Other things must also be done before your condition can be rendered prosperous; but this must precede every real improvement: the sources of the poison that infects the atmosphere you breathe must be dried up before you can be healthy, and uncleanliness must be removed from the exterior of your dwellings before you can find or make a Home.—I am your friend and servant,
Southwood Smith.
1st January 1847.
In this same year 1847 a Royal Commission—"Metropolitan Sanitary Commission" (of which my grandfather was a member)—was appointed to inquire "whether any, and what, sanitary measures were required for London."
To the country at large, however, it seemed as if perhaps there had been enough "inquiring." The thing had been considered. Surely something might be done; and Lord Morpeth now brought forward a Government measure for "improving the health of towns in England."
In bringing in the bill, Lord Morpeth first gives a history of the principal stages of the various inquiries and commissions which had been helped on by all parties, and by successive Governments. He states that he has nothing new to bring forward, and can but repeat the information gained by others. He goes on to show by elaborate statistics the waste of life in large towns.
"Thus the inhabitants of London," he sums up, "compared with England at large, lose eight years of their lives, of Liverpool nineteen. The population of the large towns in England being 4,000,000, the annual loss is between 21,000 and 22,000."[[22]]
But all places are not equally unhealthy, as further statistics strikingly show. Where do we find the greatest number of deaths? Is it where wages are lowest and the people poorest? What did Lord Morpeth tell the House?
"Let it not be said," he urges, "that the greater rate of mortality in certain districts is owing to extreme poverty and the want of the necessaries of life. The condition of the labourers of the west, the lowness of their wages and the consequent scantiness of their food and clothing, have been the subject of public animadversion. The mortality of the south-western district, which includes Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts, is only 1 in 52—not 2 per cent; while that of the north-western, including Cheshire and Lancashire, is 1 in 37. With the exception of the Cornish miners the condition of labourers throughout the western counties is nearly the same, yet in Wiltshire, the county of lowest wages, the deaths are 1 in 49, in Lancashire 1 in 36. The average age at death in Wiltshire was thirty-five, in Lancashire twenty-two. The Wiltshire labourer's average age was thirty-five, that of the Liverpool operative fifteen. At Manchester, in 1836, the average consumption per head of the population was 105 lb. of butcher's meat—about 2 lb. a-week (exclusive of bacon, pork, fish, and poultry); the average age at death was twenty years." He then brings forward evidence of the preventibleness of most of the premature deaths.
Having proved the extent of the evil, Lord Morpeth proceeded to show how it was proposed to meet it,—by what machinery of central board, inspectors, &c; and, lastly, he entered into the money-saving that would be effected were thorough sanitary measures carried out. He cites Dr Playfair's estimates, which give the money loss, through unnecessary sickness and death, at £11,000,000 for England and Wales, and at £20,000,000 for the United Kingdom. This loss arises from many causes: the expenses of direct attendance on the sick; the loss of what they would have earned; the loss caused by the premature death of productive contributors to the national wealth; and the expenses of premature funerals.