But if I have addressed myself to this objection, partly because—to the very limited extent in which it starts from a true premiss, it deserves reply; and partly because I wish emphatically to declare my conviction, that such evils as I denounce are not the more to be tolerated for their rising in unwilling Pauperism, rather than in willing Filth; yet I doubt whether poverty be so important an element in the case as some people imagine. And although I have referred especially to a poor neighbourhood—because here it is that knowledge and personal refinement will have least power to compensate for the insufficiencies of public law; yet I have no hesitation in saying that sanitary mismanagement spreads very appreciable evils high in the middle ranks of society; and from some of the consequences, so far as I am aware, no station can call itself exempt.
The fact is, as I have said, that, except against wilful violence, life is practically very little cared for by the law. Fragments of legislation there are, indeed, in all directions: enough to establish precedents—enough to testify some half-conscious possession of a principle; but, for usefulness, little beyond this. The statutes tell that now and then, there has reached to high places the wail of physical suffering. They tell that our law-makers, to the tether of a very scanty knowledge, have, not unwillingly, moved to the redress of some clamorous wrong. But—tested by any scientific standard of what should be the completeness of sanitary legislation; or tested by any personal endeavour to procure the legal correction of gross and glaring evils; their insufficiencies, I do not hesitate to say, constitute a national scandal, and, perhaps in respect of their consequences, something not far removed from a national sin.
In respect of houses—here and there, under local Acts of Parliament, exist sanitary powers, generally of a most defective kind; pretending often to enforce amendments of drainage and water-supply; sometimes to provide for the cleansing of filthy and unwholesome tenements; in a few cases to prevent over-crowding; very rarely to ensure stringent measures against houses certified to be unfit for human habitation. Occasionally—but a few lines would exhaust the list, an application of the Public Health Act, or some really efficient local Act, has put it within reach of the authorities to do all that is needful under certain of these heads. But I know of no such town that would bear strict examination as to its possession of legal powers to fulfil, what I presume must be the principle contemplated by the law—that no house should be let for hire unless presenting the conditions indispensable for health, or be hired for more occupants than it can decently and wholesomely accommodate.[2] However this may be expressed, and in whatever laws embodied, local or general, I will venture to say that no Government should suffer a town, either to be without the means of enforcing this principle, or, having such means, to shirk their exercise. Our Constitution may properly concede that local representative authorities shall have their option whether, for sanitary purposes, to fall under a general law, or to have Local Improvement Acts of their own; but, in the present state of knowledge, it certainly seems incontestable that one or other of these alternatives should be compulsory, and that all Local Improvement Acts should be required, in their sanitary clauses, to come up to the standard of the Public Health Act of the time, whatever it may be.
[2] In addition to the ordinary powers—given, for instance, in the Public Health or City Sewers Act, for abating accumulated nuisances and for enforcing wholesome constructional arrangements; a principal requirement of all bodies having jurisdiction for the public health is, that there should be vested in them some authority, enabling them to regulate, in the spirit of the Common Lodging House Act, all houses which are liable to be thronged by a dangerous excess of low population. Almost invariably such houses are of the class technically known as ‘tenement-houses,’ i. e., houses divided into several tenements or holdings; whereof each—though very often consisting but of a single small room, receives its inmates without any available restriction as to their sex or number, and without regard to the accommodation requisite for cleanliness, decency, and health. The inhabitants of such houses, especially where of the lower order of Irish, constantly lapse into the most brutal filthiness of habits, and live in almost incredible conditions of dirt, over-crowding, and disease. See sections of the following Reports, beginning severally at [pages 44], [146], and [195]. Powers for dealing with these evils might be given to Local Boards of Health, most usefully, I think, in some such form as the following: 1) that—in respect of any house occupied by more than one family, if it be situate in any court, alley, or other place having no carriage-way, and be not assessed to the poor-rate at a higher rental than £...... per annum; or if in it any occupied holding consist of only one room, provided the rent of such room do not exceed the sum of ......shillings per week, or if in it there reside, or within three months previous have resided, any person receiving parochial relief, medically or otherwise; on the certificate of a duly authorized medical officer, that any such house, or part thereof, is habitually in a filthy condition, or that from over-crowding or defective ventilation the health of its inmates is endangered, or that there has prevailed in it undue sickness or mortality of an epidemic or infectious kind; the Local Board may call upon its owner to register it in a book kept for this purpose; and in respect of all houses thus registered, the Local Board may make rules for periodical washing, cleansing, and limewhiting, and for the regular removal of all dust or refuse-matter, may fix the number of tenements into which it shall be lawful to divide any such house, or the total number of inmates who may at one time be received therein, may require its better ventilation by the construction of additional windows or louvres, and may from time to time make such other regulations and orders as they shall judge necessary for the maintenance of health and decency; and may recover from the owner or lessee of any such house penalties for neglect of any legal requisitions, rules, and orders, as aforesaid: 2) that—on the certificate of a duly authorised medical officer, that the condition of any house or room is such as to render probable the rise or the spread of infectious and dangerous disease among its inmates, the Local Board may cause the owner or lessee of such house to be summoned before a magistrate; who, after due hearing, or in default of the owner’s or lessee’s appearance, may order the house, or any part of it, to be evacuated of all tenants within such time as he shall judge fit, and not again to be tenanted till after licence from the Local Board given on the certificate of their medical officer that its causes of unhealthiness are abated; and the magistrate may enforce penalties for non-compliance with his order, as aforesaid: 3) that—after an Order in Council bringing into action the extraordinary clauses of the Nuisances Removal Act, the Local Board, on receiving the certificate of their medical officer that any house, or part of house, is in such condition as to be imminently dangerous to the lives of its inmates in respect of the prevailing epidemic, or any similar disease, may issue a peremptory order for its evacuation, and may recover, from the owner or lessee to whom such order is addressed, penalties for every day during which, or part of which, after such order, the house, or any part thereof, continues to be tenanted; nor, under like penalties, shall it be lawful, except after written licence from the Local Board, given as aforesaid, to allow such house to be re-occupied.
Under circumstances like those just adverted to, may be found traces of enactment against offensive and injurious trades. Unregulated slaughtering throughout all London, except the City, tallow-melting in St. Paul’s church-yard, bone-boiling beside Lambeth Palace, may serve to illustrate the completeness and efficiency of these laws—even in our metropolitan area. Here we greatly lack some competent authority, on the part of the Government, to investigate all circumstances connected with such establishments, generally; to suggest laws for their prospective restriction, as to places wherein they may lawfully settle; and to frame regulations—enforceable by any Local Board of Health, for ensuring that all available measures be employed to mitigate their nuisance. Considering the circumstances under which many of these establishments have existed, no one can entertain a thought, that—even for the public health, they should be liable to the tyranny of an unconditional displacement. But if there existed—as undoubtedly there should exist, some skilled tribunal, competent to speak on the subject; then, I will venture to say, it might be quite in accordance with our English sense of liberty, that—after a certain condemnatory verdict by this tribunal, it should be open to the Local Board of Health to procure their expulsion, on payment of whatever compensation an ordinary jury might award.
Again, with factories; thanks to Lord Shaftesbury’s indefatigable benevolence, the law has appointed an inspection of certain establishments, a restriction of their hours of labour, and some care against the dangers of unboxed machinery. And with mining also the law has interfered, chiefly as to the ventilation of mines; but hitherto so ineffectively that, while I write, the coal-miners are remonstrating with the Legislature on the thousand lives per annum still sacrificed through the insufficient protection accorded them. If there be meaning in this legislation—if it imply any principle, the meaning and the principle require to be developed into a general law, that every establishment employing labour be liable to inspection and regulation in regard of whatever acts and conditions are detrimental or hazardous to life. If factory-children are cared for, lest they be over-worked; and miners, lest they be stifled; so, for those who labour with copper, mercury, arsenic, and lead, let us care, lest they be poisoned! for grinders, lest their lungs be fretted into consumption! for match-makers, lest their jaws be rotted from them by phosphorus! And here let it again be noticed, as in the class of cases last spoken of, how greatly wanted is some skilled tribunal, to form part of any lawful machinery which might ensure that, in these and similar instances, no precautions necessary to life are withheld through ignorance or parsimony.
Against adulterations of food, here and there, obsolete powers exist, for our ancestors had an eye to these things; but, practically, they are of no avail. If we, who are educated, habitually submit to have copper in our preserves, red-lead in our cayenne, alum in our bread, pigments in our tea, and ineffable nastinesses in our fish-sauce, what can we expect of the poor? Can they use[3] galactometers? Can they test their pickles with ammonia? Can they discover the tricks by which bread is made dropsical[4], or otherwise deteriorated in value, even faster than they can cheapen it in price? Without entering on details of what might be the best organisation against such things, I may certainly assume it as greatly a desideratum, that local authorities should uniformly have power to deal with these frauds (as, of course, with every sale of decayed and corrupted food) and that they should be enabled to employ skilled officers, for detecting at least every adulteration of bread and every poisonous admixture in condiments and the like.
[3] The proverbial dilutions of milk are not its only deteriorations. Cows are so ill kept in London, and in consequence so often sickly, that milk suffers—sometimes by mere impoverishment, sometimes by much graver derangements. If there were instituted a proper Inspection of Provisions, one function of its officers should be to visit cow-houses, and to prevent the distribution of milk thus damaged or infected. I suspect that a sanitary reform of these establishments would make a sensible difference to the nursery-population of the metropolis.
[4] A chief artifice in the cheapening of bread is to increase its weight by various means which render it retentive of water. The other usual frauds consist in the employment of inferior flours—either not cereal, or damaged and partially deglutinised.
In some respects this sort of protection is even more necessary, as well as more deficient, in regard to the falsification of drugs. The College of Physicians and the Apothecaries’ Company are supposed to exercise supervision in the matter; so that at least its necessity is recognised by the law. The security thus afforded is, in practice, null. It is notorious in my profession that there are not many simple drugs, and still fewer compound preparations, on the standard strength of which we can reckon. It is notorious that some important medicines are so often falsified in the market, and others so often mis-made in the laboratory, that we are robbed of all certainty in their employment. Iodide of potassium—an invaluable specific, may be shammed to half its weight with the carbonate of potash. Scammony, one of our best purgatives, is rare without chalk or starch, weakening it, perhaps, to half the intention of the giver. Cod-liver oil may have come from seals or from olives. The two or three drops of prussic acid that we would give for a dose may be nearly twice as strong at one chemist’s as at another’s. The quantity of laudanum equivalent to a grain of opium being, theoretically, 19 minims; we may practically find this grain, it is said, in 4.5 minims, or in 34.5. And my colleague, Dr. R. D. Thomson, who has much experience in these matters, tells me that of calamine—not indeed an important agent, but still an article of our pharmacopœia—purporting daily to be sold at every druggist’s shop, there has not for years, he believes, existed a specimen in the market.[5]