The Sanitary Evolution of London

by Henry Jephson

The creation of this body constitutes a great landmark in the sanitary evolution of London, for it was the first recognition by Parliament of the great principle of the unity of London; of the necessity—at least so far as regarded one matter—for one central governing authority for the numerous populations, and bodies, and districts which were becoming welded together into one mighty town and one vast community.

It is true, the recognition extended only to this one matter, and that the Central Board was to be a Board nominated by the Crown, and without any vestige of representation upon it, but none the less it was a forward step towards a sounder and wiser system of government than that which had hitherto prevailed.

That the new body failed to prove equal to the task imposed upon it was due as well to the constituent members thereof as to the imperfections of the machinery devised by the Act. Its failure, however, in no way controverted the soundness of the great principle thus, for the first time, recognised by Parliament.

The evidence given before the Royal Commissioners brought into view the enormous area of filth and limitless insanitation in London: it displayed some of the principal sources of the excessive amount of disease and premature mortality; and to some extent it elucidated the principles and demonstrated the practicability of large measures of prevention. And it also disclosed the regrettable fact that since the epidemic of cholera in 1832 there had been little or no improvement in the sanitary condition of many parts of the metropolis—indeed, in most parts of it the evils were wider spread and acuter in form, whilst, owing to the increase of population, the numbers affected were vastly larger.

All the while the Commissioners were sitting, the evil seeds of insanitation were producing a tremendous crop, and events actually occurring at the moment emphasised the crying need for some means of grappling with the intolerable existing evils. The whole class of zymotic diseases—diseases which constitute the true gauge of the healthiness or unhealthiness of a community—received a rapid and immense development.[31] From 9,600 deaths from such diseases in 1846, the number increased to 14,000 in 1847; and in this latter year the metropolis was visited by two epidemics which rendered the mortality of the last quarter of the year higher than that of any other quarter of any year since the new system of registration of deaths had been commenced.[32] Typhus fever produced fourfold its ordinary mortality—other diseases showed a similar increase—and towards the end of November influenza broke out and spread so suddenly and to such an extent that within five or six weeks it attacked no less than 500,000 persons out of 2,100,000—the then population of London. Altogether the excess of mortality in 1847 over 1845 was very close upon 50,000 persons.

The attitude of Parliament and of successive Governments about this period, as regarded the insanitary condition of the masses of the inhabitants of London, is now almost incomprehensible. The plea of ignorance cannot be urged in exculpation, for their own Blue Books and official returns were there to inform them. Moreover, the existence of similar evils throughout the country, where they were on a very much smaller scale, was recognised both by the Government and Parliament.

Lord Morpeth, a member of the Cabinet, speaking in 1848 in the House of Commons, said[33]:—

“It is far from any temporary evil, any transient visitant, against which our legislation is now called upon to provide. It is the abiding host of disease, the endemic and not the epidemic pestilence, the permanent overhanging mist of infection, the annual slaughter doubling in its ravages our bloodiest fields of conflict, that we are now summoned to grapple with.”

Yet they resolutely shut their eyes to the huge mass of misery and fearful waste of life which was going on at their very doors, and all around them. This was proved beyond controversy by their action in 1848. In that year the Government introduced into Parliament a measure which was, in effect, a comprehensive sanitary code, and which, if duly enforced, was capable of conferring vast benefit on the community at large.