“All who have made themselves acquainted with the condition of many of the poor of London will agree with me when I say that before their moral or religious state is likely to be remedied, their physical condition must be improved, and their houses made more comfortable. On you devolves, to a great extent, the solemn responsibility for carrying out the preparatory work.”
The Medical Officer of Health for St. Martin-in-the-Fields wrote to his Vestry in 1858: “To permit such grievous evils as are to be seen in the worst localities of this great city is a contradiction to the teaching of Christianity … such outrages on humanity as many of the abodes of the poor are permitted to remain.
“It is unholy, it is unchristian, that people should herd together in such dens; and so long as such dwellings are allowed to be occupied our assumed religion must be a pretence and a sham….”
And thus, the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green:—
“To open out avenues through our cul-de-sac courts, to promote the sanitary condition of every house, to arrest by thorough drainage and removal of refuse the elimination of aerial poison, are the great duties that we have day by day to do. Though the task before us be great, the objects in view are immeasurably greater—to exalt the standard of life, to economise rates, and above all to decrease the sum of misery, disease, and death…. To supply the arm strong to labour, to substitute productive for unproductive citizens, to decrease the death-roll of the young, and to protract life beyond the present span, these are the tasks that sanitary science imposes on us.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Clerkenwell pointed out that—
“The poorer classes have not the means of remedying the defective sanitary conditions under which they are living. But the Vestry has this power.”
The Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras made a calculation that nearly 1,200 deaths in the parish in 1858 were due to causes which might have been prevented by sanitary improvements. “To every death we may safely assume more than thirty cases of illness. This gives us 36,000 cases of preventable disease in the year.”
“You will see,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. James’ (1856), “that by diminishing death and disease, you are diminishing poverty and want…. The sanitary question lies at the root of all others. It is a national one and a religious one. It is true that in the exercise of your powers you will often be met by the assertion of the rights of property, but the right of life stands before the right of property, and it is this recognition of the sacredness of human life that lies at the foundation of sanitary legislation.”