I have hitherto abstained from vexing my
readers with details; nor do I wish now to do more than draw their attention to a few extracts from public documents respecting the habitations of the poor. I take the following from the Hand Loom Weavers’ Report in 1841.
“The First Annual Report of the Registrar-General, showed for the year 1838 a variation of the annual mortality in different districts of the metropolis, amounting to 100 per cent.; a difference nearly equal to that which exists between the most healthy and the least healthy portions of the world. The inquiries instituted at the same time by the Poor Law Commissioners into the physical causes of fever in the metropolis, have traced the comparative mortality of the unhealthy districts principally to the presence of impurities, the want of ventilation, and the bad construction of houses.
“The following extracts from Dr. Southwood Smith’s Report on Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, show both the causes and the intensity of the evil.
‘It appears,’ says Dr. Southwood Smith, ‘that in many parts of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, fever of a malignant and fatal character is always more or less prevalent. In some streets it has recently prevailed in almost every house; in some courts in every house; and in some few instances in every room in every house. Cases are recorded in which every member of a family has been attacked in succession, of whom in every such case several have died; some whole families have been swept away. Instances are detailed in which there have been found in one small room six persons lying ill of fever together; I have myself seen this, four in one bed, and two in another.
* * * * *
‘The room of a fever patient in a small and heated apartment in London, with no perflation of fresh air, is perfectly analogous to a standing pool in Ethiopia full of bodies of dead locusts. The poison generated in both cases is the same; the difference is merely in the degree of its potency. Nature with her burning sun, her stilled and pent up wind, her stagnant and teeming marsh, manufactures plague on a large and fearful scale. Poverty in her hut, covered with her rags, surrounded with her filth, striving with all her might to keep out the pure air and to increase the heat, imitates nature but too successfully: the process and the product are the same; the only difference is in the magnitude of the result.
‘But the magnitude of the result in London, if that magnitude be estimated by the numbers attacked, is not slight. From returns received from the Bethnal Green and Whitechapel Unions it appears that during the last year there occurred of fever cases,
| In the Bethnal Green Union | 2,084 |
| In the Whitechapel Union | 2,557 |
| Total | 4,641 |
The state of things described above by Dr. Southwood Smith is by no means confined to the metropolis; nor, even, is it to be seen in its worst form there. Mr. Chadwick says,
“the most wretched of the stationary population of which I have been able to obtain any account, or that I have ever seen, was that which I saw in company with Dr. Arnott, and others, in the wynds of Edinburgh and Glasgow.” I forbear to add their detailed report, which, as regards Glasgow especially, represents a loathsome state of filth and wretchedness. If we go now to the manufacturing towns of England, the evidence is of a similar character. “The following extract,” says the Sanitary Report, “is descriptive of the condition of large classes of tenements in the manufacturing towns of Lancashire. It is from the report of Mr. Pearson, the medical officer of the Wigan Union.”
“From the few observations which I have been enabled to make respecting the causes of fever during the two months which I have held the situation of house-surgeon to the Dispensary, I am inclined to consider the filthy condition of the town as being the most prominent source. Many of the streets are unpaved and almost covered with stagnant water, which lodges in numerous large holes which exist upon their surface, and into which the inhabitants throw all kinds of rejected animal and vegetable matters, which then undergo decay and emit the most poisonous exhalations. These matters are often allowed, from the filthy habits of the inhabitants of these districts, many of whom, especially the poor Irish, are utterly regardless both of personal and domestic cleanliness, to accumulate to an immense extent, and thus become prolific sources of malaria, rendering the atmosphere an active poison.”
Dr. Edward Knight, speaking of some parts of the town of Stafford, says,
“These parts of the town are without drainage, the houses, which are private property, are built without any regard to situation or ventilation, and constructed in a manner to ensure the greatest return at the least possible outlay. The accommodation in them does not extend beyond two rooms; these are small, and, for the most part, the families work in the day-time in the same room in which they sleep, to save fuel.
“There is not any provision made for refuse dirt, which, as the least trouble, is thrown down in front of the houses, and there left to putrefy.”
Mr. William Rayner, the medical officer of the Heaton Norris district of the Stockport Union, thus describes a part of that town: