But the measure which was framed to relieve this sum of misery, though well and carefully prepared, was again to be thrown out!
It was weary work. The years were passing away, and nothing was being done. My grandfather used to come home saddened by each new defeat. He was sad at the delay, but he was not disheartened; he knew that the thing would be done in time, and that the progress must be slow. He could wait calmly in that belief and enjoy fully the beauty of the sunset light during the summer evenings passed in our beautiful field, overlooking the green slopes and large trees of Caen Wood, Highgate. There our friends used to come to us, amongst others Professor Owen, Robert Browning, William and Mary Howitt, and Hans Christian Andersen; and we spent evenings that I can never forget, staying out constantly till the moon rose or the stars came out. How he loved nature and all happy things!
His faith did not err. The work of urging had not been in vain; the movement could not be stopped; the time was ripe.
The bill had been thrown out in 1847, but in 1848 the first sanitary law, the Public Health Act, passed!
CHAPTER VIII.
OFFICIAL LIFE—GENERAL BOARD OF HEALTH, 1848-1854.
Immediately after the passing of the Public Health Act, Lord Morpeth wrote to my grandfather that the changes made in the bill during its passage through Parliament had prevented the creation of any post which could be offered to him. Lord Morpeth said, however, that if Dr Southwood Smith would give the department the advantage both of his presence and counsel by accepting a seat on the Board, he hoped to provide for him a permanent post, by means of a supplementary Act, "The Diseases Prevention Act," which the Government expected to pass shortly. In answer to this my grandfather wrote as follows:—
38 Finsbury Square, Sept. 12, 1848.
My dear Lord Morpeth,—I thank you very sincerely for your kind communication.... Thanks to your Lordship's indefatigable exertions, a position is now gained from which it is possible to attack, with some hope of success, the sources of excessive sickness and of premature mortality. You have at last laid the foundation of Practical Sanitary Improvement; but the structure is still to be raised, and if, as your Lordship intimates, both you and the Government are desirous that I should assist you in this labour, no one will apply himself with a deeper feeling of responsibility, or with greater earnestness, to what her Majesty justly calls "this beneficent work."
Your Lordship will remember how earnest I was in December last, on the publication of the Bishop of London's Pastoral Letter, that we should at once avail ourselves of the power of the Contagious Diseases Act; as well to make immediate preparation against the threatened visitation of cholera, as to check the progress of our own native epidemics, then and still so frightfully prevalent; diseases manifestly dependent on conditions within our control, and highly favourable to the spread of the pestilence then menacing, and now still more nearly menacing us. The Bishop of London had called earnestly upon the clergymen of his diocese to co-operate with the medical profession in this object; and being desirous of ascertaining the state of intelligence and feeling of this natural class of co-operators in such a work, I visited privately every clergyman in the Eastern District of London and discussed the subject with them.