The whole tone of this report was such that he could not possibly continue as Medical Officer of Health to a then existing Vestry, and he resigned.
He was succeeded by another very able man, Dr. Henry Bateson, from whose reports may be continued the description of this parish up to the census of 1861.
“The onward moral and intellectual progress of the human race depends far more upon the sanitary state which surrounds it than has ever yet entered into our imaginations to conceive….
“We have suffered severely from the ravages of smallpox. Smallpox is a disease over which we have perfect control, and which, were vaccination thoroughly carried out, might be banished from these dominions.”
“… Men whose nervous systems become depressed and the tone of their system generally lowered, become the subjects of a continued craving for stimulants.”
“… Our wells are but the receptacles of the washings from our streets, the off-scourings from our manufactories, the permeations from our cesspools, and the filterings from our graveyards.”
1860–1861. After five years’ local government:—
“The circumstances are various and complicated, which contribute to prevent the improvement of the district, and even make the endeavour seem at times hopeless. No one can know the fertile sources that exist for producing in the mind this feeling of despair save those engaged in sanitary labours; or those perchance whose duty it may be to visit our poorest and lowest localities.” … “It is no light and easy work to remove the aggregate evils of centuries which, like the coral reefs of the ocean, have grown up silently and continuously to their present magnitude…. There are hindrances all around, some of which are unsurmountable, such as those arising from the imperfections of the law itself … there are also vested rights, customs, ignorance, stupidity, and avarice, all of which have to be dealt with and overcome if possible.”
“Nature never pardons. Obey and it is well; disobey and reap the bitter consequences.”
Referring to some houses “of the worst description, having no yards, nor even windows behind, so that ventilation was impossible,” he says: “I am sorry to say that there are numbers of similar houses still standing, and occupied by the most ignorant and degraded of our population—a class living almost in the neglect of laws human and divine; and as heedless about the present and the future as the very heathen themselves….”