There is also a similar institution in connection with the Madeley Court Works, with about 350 members, who pay annually £113 15s.
Adding all these together we find that, without taking the United Brothers and a sick society at Coalport called the Pitcher into account, there are 2985 members of clubs, subscribing a total of £2380 1s. 10d. annually, and possessing a capital of £4721 6s. 5d.!!
These facts may be considered as a reply in a great measure to the charge sometimes made against the working classes of an utter want of thrift and forethought, and suggest the question whether men making so much provision for the future for themselves and families ought not to be excused to some extent the payment of poor rates.
THE SANITARY STATE OF THE PARISH.
The sanitary state of Madeley and Ironbridge is far from what it ought to be. There is not only a sad deficiency of water, but much that is used is impure. Severn water is carried and sold at Madeley Wood and Lincoln Hill at 1d., 1½., and sometimes 2d. per pail, or 6d. for a small barrel. Again, any one who knows the turbid tale of Severn-water after rain, or is acquainted with the amount of sewage thrown into the river, will question the quality of such water for drinking purposes. Just above one of the lading places a sewer comes down near the back of the Police Office and empties its black sludge into the river. Some use filters; but high authorities on the subject assert that although mechanical impurities may be got rid of those which are chemical or organic remain.
Let persons who undervalue an abundant supply of good water ask their wives or some medical man as to its importance; or let them beg it or buy it, and fetch it from long distances, often waiting their turns at the well, or count the cost which impure water entails. Let them look at the sickness, the pain and distress of parents watching day by day the fevered or pallid cheeks and withered forms of their household treasures. Perhaps the mother herself is struck down, or the bread-winner of the family; and in case death ensues, added to the crushing force of the blow, there are doctor’s bills, and excessive funeral expenses, which lie as a dead-weight from which the family scarcely ever recovers!
“When,” as the Times newspaper put it some time ago, “it is considered that water constitutes nearly three-fourths of the entire weight of the animal body, that it is the basis of all beverages, and the solvent by means of which all food is assimilated and all secretion is performed, the importance of obtaining it in a state of purity would seem to require no further demonstration. Unfortunately, however, although the facts have for a long time been universally admitted, the practical conclusions to which they would lead have comparatively seldom been acted upon. Not only do we obtain the greater part of our supply of water from that which has already washed the earth, but we have permitted water flowing in its natural channels to be everywhere utilised as a carrier of the worst descriptions of filth.”
All in fact must see on a little reflection that however excusable certain things might have been at one time they are no longer so under the light thrown upon them by deep and long-continued investigations by scientific men who have devoted much study to the subject. All must know that no proper supervision has up to the present been taken, and nothing like proper compulsion has been applied to the removal of glaring evils.
Let those who are apathetic on this subject ponder the following, taken from a paper read a short time since before the Society of Arts by J. J. Pope, Professor of Hygiene to the Birkbeck Institution. The author said:—
“it is a startling fact that one-fourth of the children born into this world to endure for threescore years and ten, die before they attain the age of five years. This is a sad truth, and the more lamentable when we know that these deaths mostly arise from causes that are quite preventible.”