Among the public authorities from which much might have been hoped in the way of improving the public health of the inhabitants of London was the School Board. The Board stood in an exceptionally favourable position for moulding the physical constitution of hundreds of thousands of children and of successive generations, but education appeared to have almost excluded the consideration of health.
In 1871 the Board resolved “that it is highly desirable that means shall be provided for physical training, exercise and drill in public elementary schools established under the Board.” But beyond this, little if anything was done, and even it was not made applicable to the girls. And no Medical Officer was appointed, and no systematic means organised for the prevention of the diffusion of diseases by the schools. Indirectly, however, good results were flowing from the schools. The attendance of the children at the schools took them out of their overcrowded tenement-homes for several hours in the day; their playgrounds afforded better means of exercise; the cleanliness expected of them raised their ideas as to cleanliness; the supervision over them was of great use in improving their conduct and character, all helped to improve their physical condition. But how infinitely greater the improvement might have been, not merely at the time but to the rising generation, if the School Board had given greater attention to this branch of the children’s welfare. About 230,000 children were in attendance in the Board’s Schools in 1880.
The really encouraging feature of the general position was that a larger section of the public was taking an interest in matters relating to the public health.
In Battersea, wrote the Medical Officer of Health (1881):—
“Much assistance is now derived from the general public, who are more alive to the necessity of sanitary measures than at any previous period.”
The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, reported:—
“The health of the people occupies the thought and consideration of an ever-increasing number,” and he quoted the declaration of the head of the Government that “the sanitary question lies at the bottom of all national well-being.”
The Medical Officer of Health for North Poplar stated that—
“Gradually the labouring portion of the population, which so largely outnumbers the remainder with us, is becoming educated to the fact that they must neither breathe air, drink water, nor take food, polluted by filth.”
But, as a whole, public opinion was more or less inert.