The other great factor in the sanitary evolution of London was the group of great hospitals—general and special—supported, not by the State nor by aid from the local rates, but by the charitable public, and governed and managed and worked not by officials, paid either by the central or local authorities, but by men—lay and medical—who, from the highest and most public-spirited motives, devoted themselves to this responsible work.
The general hospitals in 1890 numbered nineteen—some of them great institutions, such as St. Bartholomew’s, St. Thomas’s, Guy’s, the London Hospital; and the number of special hospitals—many of them small—was stated to be 67 in 1890.
“The total number of beds in the general and special hospitals in London combined was stated by Dr. Steele to be 8,500, of which 6,500 are continually employed. But according to Mr. Burdett—8,094 and 6,143.”
“The vast numbers of persons who are treated in out-patients’ departments of hospitals, the number treated at the eleven hospitals with schools, were estimated by one witness at over half a million.”
Here, again, no precise estimate can be formed of the part these great institutions have taken in the sanitary evolution of London. That their part has been a really great one is evident without figures—proved not only by the millions restored to health and capable citizenship, but even more by their adopting and reducing to practice, and placing within the reach of the whole community, the vast benefits following the great scientific discoveries of recent times.
Among the many causes of insanitation, and all its miserable accompaniments, one of the most hopeless and most difficult to deal with has always been intemperance or “drink.” Statistics give no means of estimating its disastrous consequences, but these consequences always have been, and still are, of the most deplorable kind. The overcrowded dwellings and bad sanitary arrangements constantly tended to increase the habit of intemperance, and the moral degradation caused by drink made people indifferent to their housing, and lead to the poverty which increased overcrowding and insanitation.
In London the facilities for obtaining drink are practically unlimited. In the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, which was appointed in 1896, it was stated that:—
“In Soho District, in an area of a quarter of a square mile, there were 1950 inhabited houses and 116 public-houses. In another district, a little over half a square mile in extent, there were 259 public-houses (excluding restaurants and private hotels).”
Down one mile of Whitechapel Road there were 45 public-houses.
“The streets branching off, the hinterland, are also thickly supplied; some exactly opposite each other.”