The Sanitary Evolution of London

CHAPTER III

1861–1870

The Census of 1861 disposed of the various estimates of the population of London, and of the death-rates in its various parishes, and gave authoritatively the actual figures.

From 2,363,341 persons in 1851, the population had gone up to 2,808,494 in 1861—an increase not very far short of half a million; and the number of inhabited houses had increased from 306,064 to 360,065.

The natural growth of the population, or in other words, the excess of births over deaths, accounted for but part of this increase. The rest was due to the great stream of immigrants into London, which, notable previously, “continued to flow thither with unabated force.”

The increase was not equally distributed. The population of the central parts showed a decline. There the great economic forces were most powerful, and under their influence the population of the “City” had decreased by more than 15,000: that of Holborn and St. Martin-in-the-Fields by nearly 2,000 each: that of St. James’, Westminster, by about 1,000, and two or three others slightly.

But elsewhere—east, north, west, south—the increases had been great, and in some instances remarkable. Poplar had increased in the decade by 32,000; Islington by 60,000; St. Pancras by 32,000; Paddington by 29,000. And on the south side of the river, Wandsworth had increased by 20,000; Newington and Camberwell by 17,000 each; and Lambeth by 23,000.

The rate of growth in the various wards or parts of the parishes showed, both as regarded persons and houses, great differences, the most rapid increases being in the parts nearest to the centre of London.

A most material factor in the sanitary evolution of any great city, and especially so of London, is the introduction into its population of fresh elements from the outside.

The returns collected by successive Census Commissioners gave considerable information upon this point.

“London is the metropolis of the Empire,” wrote the Commissioners of 1861, “and thither the representatives of other nations, of the Colonies, and of Scotland and Ireland resort; but it is chiefly the field in which the populations of the several counties of England find scope for their talents and their industry.”

The majority of the inhabitants of London in 1861 were indigenous, for 1,701,177 were born within its limits; 1,062,812 were born elsewhere.

Of these 1,062,812, close on 36,000 were born in Scotland, 107,000 in Ireland, 19,000 in the Colonies, and 48,000 were foreigners. The remainder—amounting to about 893,000—were born in the extra-metropolitan counties of England and Wales.

“Proximity to the metropolis, and the absence of manufactures at home, first drew the natives of these counties to London. The stream of immigrants from the south-western counties was large: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire having sent 128,422 of their natives to be enumerated in London.”

Likewise the stream from Norfolk and Suffolk was large. But the great bulk of the immigrants came from the counties immediately around London.

To put the figures in simple form—of every 1,000 inhabitants of London, 606 were born in London, the remaining 394 were born elsewhere.

And the census provided also the means for ascertaining as correct a death-rate as could be arrived at. In 1851 the death-rate was 23·38 per 1,000; in 1861 it was 23·18—not much of a decrease, but satisfactory in showing that some of the evil powers of insanitation were stayed.

It is, however, always to be borne in mind that either the death-rate, or the number of deaths, gives but an imperfect and incomplete picture of the sanitary condition of a population. It tells but the tale of those who have died of disease—it leaves uncounted and untold the far greater number of those who have been either temporarily disabled or maimed for life by disease. Estimates vary considerably as to the number of persons who suffer from disease and recover; and the proportion of recoveries to deaths varies in different diseases, some diseases being so much more deadly than others. But the sick-rate is always, and under all circumstances, very much greater than the death-rate.

The mere taking of a census could have no visible or actual effect; the routine of life and the action of the various economic and social forces continued unchanged; but the information gained was of the utmost value.

The figures and the facts recorded afforded startling demonstration of the immensity of London, and of the growing gravity and complexity of the great problems of London life.

London was huge before—appalling almost in size and population; now it was shown to be huger than ever. Everything was on a more enormous scale. The masses of population were far larger, and were rapidly increasing; and with this increase everything concerning their existence became more and more complicated, and every reform more and more difficult. The removal of evils affecting their physical and social being would be a heavier task, the supervision of their conditions of life more onerous and exacting, and the provision of a government to secure their well-being a graver problem than ever.

One of the great forces unceasingly at work, and one of the great contributory causes to insanitation and to the maintenance of a high death-rate was, undoubtedly, drink. It led to poverty and overcrowding, it led to ill-health and greater susceptibility to disease; and the evils acted and reacted upon each other indefinitely—a vicious circle from which there was no escape, overcrowding leading to a craving for drink, and drink resulting in poverty and therefore overcrowding with its attendant evils and high mortality. Since the unfortunate moment in 1830 when Parliament deemed it expedient “for the better supplying the public with beer” to give greater facilities for the sale thereof, and scattered broadcast throughout the nation the seed of unlimited evil, facilities for drink not only of beer but of spirits have been practically unlimited. Against this source of evil, which is often mentioned in their reports, neither Medical Officers of Health nor Vestries could contend, and had no power to contend. But all through the history of the sanitary evolution of London this deep underlying curse was present, acting as a perpetual clog upon sanitary and social progress—a horrible, all-pervading and tremendous power for evil.

In the earlier years of this new decade of 1861–70 the central government—the Metropolitan Board of Works—was demonstrating the great utility of a central governing authority for London, and a task was nearing accomplishment which was absolutely the first essential, the very foundation of an improved state of the public health.

It was engaged in pressing vigorously forward the great system for the sewerage and drainage of London designed for taking off the sewage and refuse waters of a prospective population of three and a half million persons, and the rainfall of a drainage area of 117 square miles. Until those works were completed no great degree of sanitary improvement could be expected.

In 1861 the Board reported that a portion thereof had been finished, and as the work gradually progressed the Vestries were able to avail themselves of the deeper outfalls afforded, and to undertake drainage works in their several areas.

By 1865 the great task was virtually accomplished. Eighty-two miles of main intercepting sewers had been constructed, and the sewage was being conveyed away by them several miles distant from London.

Their completion enabled the Metropolitan Board to fill in the open sewers, which had so long polluted the atmosphere, and been such a fertile source of disease in the districts where they existed, and took away from the Vestries any excuse for delay in carrying out the construction and putting in order of the local sewers for which they were responsible.

The central authority had thus brought into existence a gigantic system of sewerage by which the river near London ceased to be the main sewer of London, and the whole of the metropolis was relieved of many of the most powerful causes of fever, cholera, and other destructive diseases. It was a great work, admirably and expeditiously carried out, and it cleared the way for other sanitary reforms which were impossible without an effective general system of sewerage, yet which were essential if a satisfactory condition of the public health were ever to be attained.

The central body also proved its great utility by securing uniformity in the sewerage and drainage works which fell to the duty of the local authorities to carry out. All plans by the Vestries had to be submitted to the Board so that the Board might see that they were consistent with the main system.

Both main drainage and house drainage were thus steadily being extended and improved, but in many places things were still outrageously bad. Nor had the creation of fresh evils been effectually prevented, for from Bromley came the complaint that several new estates were rapidly being covered with small house property which drained into cesspools.

And the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham wrote (1866):—

“The active operations of your Board have fortunately relieved the Fulham district to a large extent from that pregnant source of mischief—want of drainage; still there are large tracts of building land yet unprovided for, on much of which houses by dozens are being squatted without any regard to this great essential by the builders, save the horrid cesspool system. It is enough to have to counteract the evils of past imprudence without perpetuating them by such wilful recklessness….”

The supply of water to the inhabitants of London was of equal importance to an efficient system of sewerage. The problem had by no means been solved by “The Metropolis Water Act” of 1852, which had enacted that within five years after the passing of the Act a constant supply should be given by the companies. Unfortunately, the supply was in the hands of various public companies over which the local governing authorities had practically little or no control, and, like all sanitary legislation of this period, the results were not commensurate with the intentions of the Legislature.

An illustration of how insufficient the supply was, was detailed in a report of the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel in 1862:—

“A return has been made by the Inspector of 133 courts in the district.

“Of these—in 48 which contain 388 houses and have a population of 3,233 persons the water supply is by stand taps only, from which the water flows daily (Sundays excepted) for a period varying from quarter to half an hour.

“This intermittent supply is totally inadequate to the wants of the people.”

Parliament made an effort in 1862[81] to amend the law, and enacted that where a house was without a proper supply of water the owner or occupier might be required by the Vestry to obtain such supply, and if such notice was not complied with, the Vestry might do the necessary work and recover the expenses from the owner, and then require the water companies to supply the water.

But the Act was of little practical value, and was made of less value by the inaction of the local authorities.

A few extracts from reports of Medical Officers of Health show how thoroughly unsatisfactory and disastrous to the health of the people the existing condition of affairs was.

The Medical Officer of Health for Fulham wrote in 1864:—

“The powers at present given by Statutes for enforcing a supply of water for domestic use are, within the Fulham district, all but inoperative. The cry amongst the cottagers is still for water—water without which all other sanitary appliances are at best abortive, without which in ample and continuous flow no community can be preserved in healthfulness. On this essential will depend the perfect working of our deep and costly sewers, on this alone will hang success in minor drainage matters. Water, that first and most important element of health and cleanliness, exists in name alone in masses of our cottage property here, and consequently neither purity of person nor of dwelling can be ensured.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Martin-in-the-Fields wrote in 1864 deploring that the new laws of the water companies did not provide for water being supplied on Sunday. “It is to be lamented that people should at any time have to go about begging water, and more especially so on Sundays, the very day they most require it.”

And the Medical Officer of Health for Westminster wrote (1864):—

“The water supply to many of the courts and alleys is very unsatisfactory. No Sunday supply.

“It does seem a monstrous arrangement that for 52 days in the year the public should be deprived of that which they pay for, but have no means of substituting by anything else.”

And to complete the hardships which the people suffered under in the matter of water supply, if the house-owner did not pay the water rates when called upon to do so, the water company might cut off the supply of the people in the house. This was frequently done, and the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel recorded how for four months—

“The inhabitants of Tuson’s Court, Spitalfields, had been entirely deprived of water in consequence of the water company refusing to continue any longer the supply, as the landlord had not paid the water rate.”

The quality of the water, though improved by the change of intakes to the part of the Thames above Teddington Lock, left very much to be desired. It was no longer contaminated by the entire sewage of the metropolis, but it was still by sewage poured into the river and its tributaries by towns higher up—Oxford, Reading, Windsor, Chertsey, Hampton, and others—and received, unchecked, the whole of the pollution, solid and fluid, of the district constituting the watershed. And this same water, after it had been so polluted, was abstracted from the river, sand-filtered, and pumped into the metropolis for domestic uses and distributed to the consumers.[82]

The housing of the people was the problem which, above all others, was more and more forcing itself upon the attention of those whose work brought them into actual contact with the conditions of life of the great mass of the people who were in their charge; not merely the construction of the houses or their situation, but the accommodation afforded and the conditions of life therein.

“Our forefathers,” wrote one of the Medical Officers of Health, “knew nothing about the public health, and cared less. They added house to house, and street to street, according to their own will and apparent benefit, and so have left us this mingled heritage.”

And there were streets and courts and alleys which were not fit for human habitation, and which could never be made so; and thousands upon thousands of houses where “nothing short of a hurricane would suffice to displace and renew the air.”

London had enough to suffer under from the state of the existing houses, and an appalling task before her to remedy them, but not alone was this enormous evil practically unattacked, but fresh sources of evil were allowed to be created, and new houses were being erected which would carry into the future the evils which efforts were now being made to put an end to.

“A house may be built anywhere,” wrote one of the Medical Officers of Health in 1862, “and almost anyhow, provided all the rooms can be lighted and ventilated from a street or alley adjoining. The object of the builder is to save as much ground, materials, and expense as possible. The result is not difficult to foresee….”

No regard, moreover, was had to the ground on which new houses were being built, though that was all-important for a healthy dwelling.

“… Some of the new houses are built upon garden mould or old ‘slop shoots,’” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington in 1870–1; “these thin and flimsy shells of lath and plaster truly merit the term ‘slop buildings.’ A dangerous moisture and miasma arises from houses built upon such an unhealthy foundation.”

How disastrous the results were to the inhabitants is pointed out by several Medical Officers of Health.

The Medical Officer of Health for Mile-End-Old-Town wrote (1866):—

“… Many open places now built upon, or being built upon, have been for years the receptacles for all kinds of animal and vegetable refuse, and have become thoroughly impregnated with the products of their decomposition…. The result to the health of the occupants is daily realised by the excessive number of zymotic diseases and deaths which occur in them.”

The Medical Officer of Health for Limehouse wrote:—

“Ask about the general health and the houses. ‘Never been well since coming in, and the children always ailing; and my husband says he feels more refreshed when he comes from his work than after he gets up in the morning. And then everything spoils; meat put into a cupboard is musty in a night. One can keep nothing.’

“These are all new houses.”

And a few years later, referring to this same subject, he wrote:—

“A half mile off, a few years ago, there were some acres of gravel pits. The gravel had gone for road-making, &c. The large pit was then filled up on invitation of the owner, with the aid of the scavenger and others, with all the slush and filth of a large circle of contributors. When this fund of abominations became consolidated, it was built over in the usual style. They were soon occupied by tenants and lodgers. Now this site during the epidemic (of cholera) has been a great slaughter field—the mortality was shocking.”

And he added, “there are thousands of such houses built about London.”

The Building Act of 1855 was very far from being an effective prevention of such devices as these. It required a notice to be given to the Vestry before any new building was commenced, and a plan to be submitted for approval showing the proposed drainage and the levels of the building; but this requirement appears to have been by no means universally complied with, and some local authorities had great difficulty in getting notices of new buildings commenced within the district. And its restrictions were not sufficient to prevent the speculative builder in places from raising his block of houses in the fields with neither road or sewer for their accommodation, and with the frequent result of fever-stricken tenants.

With the increasing knowledge of their districts gained by the numerous Medical Officers of Health distributed over the whole metropolis, the widespread prevalence of overcrowding in London, and the virulent evils, physical, social, and moral, consequent thereon, come into greater prominence and more vivid light than ever before.

Throughout the central parts of London the process of demolition of houses of all sorts and sizes, inhabited by the well-to-do or by the poorest, was continuing. The street improvements which were being carried out in some places entailed extensive demolitions; whilst the construction of railways and the erection of large stations necessitated the destruction of hundreds of others, mostly those inhabited by poorer persons. Thus, in the improvements in the Holborn Valley, 348 houses, accommodating 1,044 families and 4,176 persons, were taken down and not replaced. And in St. Pancras, and many other districts, the dwellings of the poor were constantly being removed by railway expansion.

The subject of the displacement of labourers in consequence of great public works in the metropolis was brought before the House of Lords in 1861 by Lord Derby.[83]

“It affects,” he said, “in the most vital manner the interests of a large portion of the population who are utterly unable to protect themselves against legislation, however unfavourably it may bear upon them.

“In the metropolis and its suburbs sixty to seventy miles of new line (railway) are proposed—a great portion of these passing through the most crowded streets.”

He described specially the parish of St. Bartholomew’s, in Cripplegate, with a population of about 5,000 inhabiting 500 houses.

“Throughout it, there are not ten families who occupy a house to themselves, although the bulk of the houses contain only three rooms. The incumbent tells me the aristocracy of his parish consists of families who are able to indulge in the luxury of two rooms. But the greater number have one room, and one only, and this is sometimes divided between more than one family.

“Half of these houses are under notice for the railway.”

And Lord Shaftesbury described a great demolition of houses which took place a few years previously in the neighbourhood of Field Lane, City: “1,000 houses were pulled down; 4,000 families, comprising 12,000 individuals, were turned out and driven into the surrounding tenements.”

Lord Granville suggested, as a remedy, the provision of cheap trains to carry artizans from healthy dwellings in the suburbs to the scene of their work, and Lord Redesdale said he had introduced clauses into the Railway Bill providing that the companies should run a cheap train every day. But, as Lord Shaftesbury pointed out,[84] that would not be sufficient, as—

“In some cases the men are under an engagement to their employers not to live more than a certain distance from the warehouse,” in order that no time might be lost in executing orders.

The remedy, moreover, could only be very gradual in its operation, and was quite inadequate to meet the existing emergency.

This demolition of houses had thus the two-fold result of at once intensifying overcrowding in the remaining houses in the localities affected, and in extending the area of overcrowding by causing a migration to other localities, many of which were themselves rapidly becoming overcrowded. And this, combined with the natural growth of the population and the constant stream of immigration into London, resulted in overcrowding on a far larger scale than had hitherto prevailed.

In Mile-End-Old-Town the West Ward had received in the decade 1851–61 an addition of 3,094 persons, whilst but 84 new houses had been built—the South Ward 1,372 persons and 71 new houses built.

In Shoreditch, in 1863, “The tendency to overcrowding was increasing year by year.

“Being mostly operatives, &c. … accustomed to live near their places of employment, they were naturally unwilling to travel further than necessary, and so have accepted the readiest accommodation for their families.”

Of Whitechapel, the Medical Officer of Health wrote in 1865:—

“The evil of overcrowding is annually increasing, and if means be not adopted to check it, the overcrowding will soon become of an alarming extent….

“Houses formerly occupied by single families are let out in separate tenements, and every room now contains a distinct family; and to such an extent is this separate letting of rooms carried out, that from information given me there is not a single street in the parish of Whitechapel that is not more or less a nursery of pauperism in consequence of this sub-division of tenements.”

Away in the west, in Fulham, there had been a “flood of immigrants,” chiefly of “the lower and labouring classes.” The population had increased 30 per cent., and the Medical Officer of Health wrote (1865):—

“In watching the enormous accession of population to the Fulham district, one cannot otherwise than observe the constant tendency to overcrowding amongst the labouring people, whilst there seems every possibility of this human tide increasing. The tremendous demolition of the houses hitherto occupied by the working classes more immediately in London itself has dislodged thousands of families, whilst no systematised provision has been made for their reception.”

In Westminster the Medical Officer of Health wrote in 1865:—

“The dwellings of the poor were never in a worse or more unsatisfactory state than they are at present from the large number of houses that have been already demolished. The poor are now driven into the most wretched apartments, and which, in consequence of the increased demand, can only be obtained at the most extravagant rates. They are consequently compelled to herd together in one room, usually barely sufficient for half of those it is now made to hold.”

The south side of the river was much in the same plight as the north; but there, there was more room for expansion.

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour, Southwark, wrote in 1865:—

“The numerous improvements which continue to be made in and about the heart of London have so increased the value of house property that overcrowding has been almost inevitable.

“… In a vast number of instances families numbering four to seven persons, ill or well, live, cook, wash, and sleep in rooms the dimensions of which are not greater than is now demanded for each sick person in the workhouse.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, wrote:—

“In many of the districts of the metropolis between 60 and 70 per cent. of the population are compelled to live in one small overcrowded room, and in which every domestic operation has to be carried on; in it birth and death takes place; there plays the infant, there lies the corpse; it is lived in by day, and slept in by night.”

In the necessity for house accommodation all sorts of places were being pressed into use, and people driven into “places that are themselves unfit for habitation, not having the elements of life and health about them.”

The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington described, in 1867, how mews had been thus utilised:—

“In fact these back streets, originally built and intended for horses and vehicles, and only those persons without encumbrances who are engaged attending to them, have now become the resort of persons with large families following all kinds of business—rag, bone, and bottle stores, shops of various kinds, including beer-houses, builders, carpenters, smiths, tailors, sweeps, find accommodation here. Inhabiting the rooms above, too small, and unfitted with proper domestic accommodation for a family, live a vast population of all ages. These evils, rather than otherwise, are increasing.”

Into such houses and such rooms the people were by stress of circumstances compelled to go, and, as the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’ pointed out (1863):—

“A larger rent can be obtained for the same room if it is overcrowded by a large family than if it be hired for only as many inmates as it can properly receive. Hence the interests of landlords are constantly on the one side, the health of the poor on the other….”

What this pressure upon accommodation produced may be gathered from a few figures given by the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel:—

“In one room in Swan Court, having one window, seven persons slept—a man and his wife, the daughter aged 24 in consumption lying in bed, and four younger children; the cubic contents of the room were 910 = 130 cubic feet to each person.

“In Bell Court four persons occupied a room with 94 cubic feet each.

“In three rooms in Hayes Court, each 10 × 8 × 8 feet; each with only one window opening into a narrow court; each occupied by eight persons = 80 cubic feet to each person.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras (1865) described some of the consequences of the conversion of a house, built originally for one family, into one inhabited by several families:—

“… At present these families occupy usually a single room only in a house of six or eight rooms adapted for only one family. The water supply is inadequate, and at some distance from the upper rooms, and there is but one closet, one dust bin, one coal cellar, and one wash house for the whole. No one is responsible for the cleanly condition of the closet, the water tank, the single staircase, the basement, the areas, and the yard, or for emptying the dust bin.”

One of the worst forms of overcrowding was when it resulted in what was described as “indecent occupation.” For instance, as reported (1861) by the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel:—

“In a room in Windmill Court there slept the mother, two adult daughters, and two adult sons.

“In another room in the same court, a man and his wife, the daughter aged 16, and three adult sons.”

In 68 instances the rooms were “indecently occupied,” that is to say, adult brothers and sisters, or a father and daughter slept in the same room.

And he wrote:—

“We may well inquire how such gross indecency and want of self-respect can exist in this country, which is usually considered to be the centre of civilisation, and where so much money is spent in imparting religious and moral instruction to the people—yet such is the state in which many of the inhabitants of this district live, as is ascertained on a house-to-house visitation.”

And in the following year he wrote:—

“On visiting the houses in low neighbourhoods it is by no means of unfrequent occurrence to find an adult brother and sister, a father and adult daughter, a mother and adult son, occupying the same bed. What good citizenship can be expected to be manifested by a class in whom the moral feeling is so low?”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. James’, in his report (1862), wrote:—

“This close association of several families in one house is productive of immense evil; it prevents proper parental control; it encourages an association of the sexes which leads directly to one of our greatest social evils; and is one of the most fruitful causes of the spread and fatality of zymotic diseases of childhood, and lays the foundation of the scrofula and consumption which every year carry off a fifth of all who die amongst us….

“It is almost impossible, amidst the filth and stench of dirty houses and imperfect drains, that the working man’s family should be able to develop those moral and intellectual qualities which are, after all, more worth to the community than any saving of rates.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Martin-in-the-Fields, wrote (1865):—

“Rents have become so heavy that few labouring men can afford more than one room. Overcrowding in such rooms must increase, and with it the fearful results of men, women, girls, and boys, all sleeping in the same apartment. Neither religion nor morality can increase under the existing circumstances of our poorer classes. It is almost returning to the habits of our barbarous ancestors or the untutored savages of Africa and Australia.”

And the Medical Officer of Health for Holborn wrote:—

“Depend upon it, the moral and physical training of the people is more influenced by lessons—whether in health and cleanliness, or in religion and morality—that they are constantly receiving at their own firesides than by any extraneous teachings.

“When a child has been allowed to grow up with a diseased body, and a polluted mind, in a wretched room, without light, without cleanliness, and without any notions of decency, our curative efforts, whether medical, missionary, or reformatory, are as mere patchwork compared with the great preventive precaution of keeping his home as pure, as decent, and as wholesome, as possible.”

No more powerful description can be given of the moral evils of overcrowding than that of Dr. J. Simon in 1865:—

“Where ‘overcrowding’ exists in its sanitary sense, almost always it exists even more perniciously in certain moral senses. In its higher degrees it almost necessarily involves such negation of all delicacy, such unclean confusion of bodies and bodily functions, such mutual exposure of animal and sexual nakedness, as is rather bestial than human.

“To be subject to these influences is a degradation which must become deeper and deeper for those on whom it continues to work. To children who are born under its curse, it must often be a very baptism into infamy.”[85]

Overcrowding was not confined to tenement-house rooms alone. The great bulk of the working classes left their overcrowded abodes to do their day’s work in overcrowded factories, workshops, and workplaces; and in very many such places men, women, and even children were crammed together in rooms where healthy existence was impossible.

A great deal of information on this great branch of the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of London is given in the Reports from the Commissioners on Children’s Employment, and in the very valuable reports of special inquiries instituted by the Medical Department of the Privy Council.

One of these inquiries related to Bakehouses, of which there were about 3,000 in the metropolis in 1862.[86]

As a rule the place in which the bread of London was made was what in houses in general was the coal-hole and the front kitchen.

Very many bakehouses in London were stated to be in a shockingly filthy state, arising from imperfect sewerage and bad ventilation and neglect, and the bread must, during the process of fermentation, get impregnated with the noxious gases.

The sleeping places were of the worst description,[87] some of the men sleeping in the bakehouse itself. Many bakehouses were infested with rats, beetles, cockroaches, and noxious smells. The smells from the drains were very offensive—the air of the small bakehouses was generally overloaded with foul gases from the drains, from the ovens, and from the fermentations of the bread, and with the emanations from the men’s bodies; the air thus contaminated was necessarily incorporated with the dough in the process of kneading.

Half of the bakehouses in London would, it was stated, require the application to them of the Nuisances Removal Act.

Another inquiry related to the tailoring trade in the metropolis.[88] The places in which work was done were reported as varying much in their sanitary conditions, but almost universally were overcrowded and ill-ventilated, and in a high degree unfavourable to health. Some were underground, either in the basement of a house, or built like a large kennel in a small enclosed yard, and were such that no domestic servant would inhabit. In exceedingly few shops had there been any attempts at ventilation. The ventilation through the windows was practically inefficient, and instances were given of what had been found in sixteen of the most important West-end shops. In one an average of 156 cubic feet space was allowed to each operative, in another 150 cubic feet, in another 112 cubic feet. Deficient ventilation, heat, and draughts, were the causes of diseases.

A paper read by Dr. E. Symes Thompson (Assistant Physician to King’s College Hospital) at the Social Science Association Meeting in London, 1862, described the condition under which printers did their work.

“Printers often work sixteen to eighteen hours a day in a confined and heated atmosphere; perhaps thirty men and as many gaslights in a low room without ventilation or chimney, where air only enters when the door is opened….

“Printing is only one of the many trades which entail the sacrifice of every hygienic necessity, and the cause of the unhealthy looks of the workpeople cannot fail to strike any observant person who may visit their workshops. The rooms are mostly low, the windows fixed, and there is often no chimney or other ventilation.

“This is the case in large and small factories as well as in workshops—in the workroom of the milliner, the sempstress, or the bookbinder.

“In many occupations, besides the evils alluded to, the air is charged with foreign matters, which are drawn into the lungs at each inspiration; e.g., the sorting and tearing up of dirty rags in paper manufactories. The dust and fluff arising in flax, woollen, and cotton factories, and in furworks, produce similar results—and brass finishers.”

And in another paper at the same meeting Mr. George Godwin detailed his experiences as regarded the conditions under which milliners, dressmakers, and other needlewomen worked.

“In an upper room in Oxford Street, not 10 feet square, I have seen a dozen delicate young women closely shut up making artificial flowers; and there when business is pressing they work from 8 in the morning till 12 o’clock at night.

“Many of the workrooms of fashionable milliners are similarly overcrowded, as are those where young girls are engaged in book-stitching.”

He gave as an example a house in Fleet Street.

“The staircase is confined and without ventilation—the atmosphere is steaming and smells of glue.

“In the first room looked into, 40 young women and girls were sorting and stitching books. There was a stove but no ventilation…. There were more than 200 persons in that house, pent up without provision of the first necessity of life—pure air. Poor creatures so placed are being slowly slain.

“Other trades, such as cap and bonnet makers, trimmers, blond-joiners, &c., to which I have looked with some little care, are forced in many places to do just the same thing.”

“The extent of suffering entailed, and the loss to the community, it would be difficult to calculate. It is time that legislation should be tried to secure wholesome workplaces for the people. Interference is needed for thousands of persons—especially young females—the debilitated mothers in posse, should they live, of our future population. In our infant schools, too, where incalculable mischief is done by overcrowding, it is greatly required. The evil is sapping the strength of the land.”

“In several parts of London persons employed in making cheap clothing are boxed up in crowds, … some striving to get a living in a death-giving atmosphere.

“Shoemakers are often as ill-placed. In wretched apartments, in an ill-drained house, may be found men and boys huddled together without room to breathe.”

It was under such pitiable conditions that large masses of the working classes of London had to earn their daily bread.

Lord Shaftesbury truly said that “the sanitary condition of these people was of national importance, not only on account of the waste of life, but the waste of health which every year threw thousands and tens of thousands upon the rates.”[89]

And large numbers of children were also employed under insanitary conditions, and were made to do heavy work for long hours, and the consequences to their health were disastrous.[90] That their constitutions should be undermined and their physical development should be most seriously deteriorated was a necessary result.

There was a chorus from the Medical Officers of Health as to the evil sanitary consequences of overcrowding.

“Overcrowded dwellings are among the most prolific sources of disease, immorality, and pauperism.”[91]

“Overcrowding—one of the elements by which disease is not only generated but sustained.”[92]

“Overcrowding is a constant source of fever.”

“The great difficulty of obtaining lodgment for the working classes has caused overcrowding of the poor in an unprecedented manner, and consequently the development of typhus which is considered to be bred in the pestilential atmosphere of overcrowded dwellings.”[93]

Overcrowding led to numerous, indeed to all sorts and kinds of diseases.

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras wrote:—

“It has been shown that consumption and the so-called tubercular diseases are developed by want of pure air more than by any other cause.”

And not alone did the overcrowding lead to disease, but it rendered it difficult if not impossible to check disease.

“How is it possible,” wrote one of them, “to prevent the spread and fatality of fever and whooping-cough when six or seven persons are shut up in one small room breathing the same air loaded with zymotic poison over and over again?

“The danger of allowing a deadly atmosphere to be engendered by the crowding together of persons in a small room without sufficient ventilation is unfortunately not confined to the inmates of that particular room, but those diseases which are therein generated extend far beyond its immediate vicinity, and under some circumstances a large portion of a district will suffer in consequence.”[94]

Dr. Rendle, previously Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, in his evidence[95] before a Select Committee in 1866, said:—

“… The overcrowding exists to such an extent that the poor cannot by any possibility do other than breed disease, and when they breed it they give it to others.”

Lord Shaftesbury said:—

“As to the effects of all this overcrowding, can anything be more prejudicial to the human system than the filthy squalor, the fœtid air, and depressing influences of these dwellings?

“When you ask why so many of the working men betake themselves to the ale-house or gin-palace, the answer lies in the detestable state of their homes.

“I have had it from hundreds of both women and men that this cause, and this cause alone, has driven them to the use of ardent spirits…. Nine-tenths of our poverty, misery, and crime, are produced by habits of intoxication, and I trace those habits, not altogether, but mainly, to the pestilential and ruinous domiciliary condition of the great mass of the population of this metropolis and the large towns of the country.”[96]

“No bodily labour induces an exhaustion of the vital powers comparable to that resulting from the habitual breathing of air contaminated by the overcrowding of human beings.”[97]

For children born under such circumstances of overcrowding and filth, and in such insanitary surroundings, birth was mostly followed by an early death.

“Infancy in London has to creep into life in the midst of foes,” as the Times truly remarked in 1861.

Among the greatest of these foes was overcrowding. The statistics of infantile mortality are fairly reliable, and, so far as there are errors, those errors were in understating and not overstating it.

In St. Giles’, in 1861, 43½ per cent. of the total number of deaths were of children under five years of age.

“This enormous infantile mortality,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health, “is unfortunately only what is customary in our district.”

In the Strand, 1861, the percentage of deaths under five annually exceeded 45 per cent. of the total deaths. In Westminster, in 1861, there were 1,685 deaths, 770 being those of children under five—of which in St. John’s parish, out of 834 deaths, 427 were under five—or over 50 per cent.

In Bethnal Green in 1862 it was close upon 60 per cent.

In the Potteries, Notting Dale, with a population of 1,100, the deaths of children in 1870 under five were 63 per cent. of all deaths. In 1871, 72 per cent.

On the south side of the river the same tale was told. In Wandsworth 42 per cent. in 1861; in Battersea 45 per cent. in 1862; in Rotherhithe, in 1862, nearly 50 per cent.; in Bermondsey, in 1863, 57 per cent.

“It certainly,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham, “could not have been intended by Providence that of all the children born, nearly one-half should die without attaining one-fourteenth part of the threescore years and ten allotted to mankind—and yet we see the yearly realisation of this astounding fact.”

Other causes besides overcrowding contributed to this great mortality.

“Poverty,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health of Poplar, “with its concomitants—defective nourishment, want of cleanliness and ventilation, malaria, overcrowded dwellings, deficient supply or impure quality of water—these all act with unerring force upon the tender constitutions of the young.”

And another wrote:—

“What with overcrowding, insufficient food, and inattention to cleanliness, it is almost impossible an infant can resist an attack of the commonest disorder.”

And some places were in such evil sanitary condition that child life was impossible therein. Of two Courts in Islington the Medical Officer of Health reported in 1863:—

“Young children cannot live there. All that are born there, or are brought to reside there, are doomed to die within two years.”

The state of the public health generally as the result of all these sanitary abominations was very unsatisfactory.

In 1863 the mortality of London was unusually high.

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’ wrote:—

“The year has been conspicuous for a high mortality resulting from the prevalence of epidemics to an unusual degree—smallpox, scarlatina, typhus.”

The following year he reported to have been—

“A year of exceptional mortality…. Death rate 29·74 per thousand, or, if the deaths of parishioners in hospitals be included, 31·10…. Tubercular diseases, of which consumption affecting the lungs is the most important, were as usual intensely fatal in our district.”

The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel drew attention to the increase of mortality in his district. He was evidently puzzled and perplexed by it, and “candidly confessed” his inability to account for it.

“I may, however, venture a few conjectures.” Among them was this very suggestive one—“that a change has taken place in the constitution of the people so that they are now less able to bear the effects of disease than formerly.”

Suggestions and recommendations for ameliorating this appalling condition of things poured in upon many of the local authorities from their Medical Officers of Health.

Upon several points there was an absolute consensus of opinion.

One of these was that all houses let out in separate tenements and inhabited by many families should be registered by the local authorities—that rules and regulations should be made for their management, and that constant inspection by the sanitary authority was an absolute necessity if the proper conditions of health were to be maintained.

The Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green wrote:—

“All sanitary evils fall with greatest force upon those who are unable to quit the scene of their misery or to provide the means for its alleviation.

“Nothing but adaptation of the present houses to the necessities of healthy existence and the demolition of those houses that are unfit for human habitation can contribute so much to life and strength.”

A Committee of the District Board in Poplar wrote (1866):—

“It would be a satisfactory alteration of the law if no houses were allowed to be tenanted unless a certificate that these premises were fit for habitation were first obtained from the District Board of Works.”

And the necessity of constant inspection was even more vigorously expressed.

The Medical Officer of Health for Hackney wrote (1861):—

“The experience of the past year again shows the necessity of keeping up a regular and efficient supervision of the interior of houses….

“It is only by repeated and careful inspection of the dwellings of the poor, and an inculcation at these visits of the necessity for keeping clean their rooms that epidemic diseases can be kept in check.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. James’ wrote (1862):—

“The nuisances which are removed, are constantly recurring. It is only by constant inspection and by supervision repeated systematically from day to day, and week to week, that those nuisances can be kept down which are ever ready to destroy the life, and at one and the same time sap the health and undermine the morality of the community.”

The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel wrote:—

“If it were not for the vigilance of the Inspectors in visiting the houses of the poor, nuisances would remain altogether unattended to; for very few of the poor dare to make a complaint from fear of being compelled to quit their tenements.”

The Medical Officers of Health recognised that much of the bad condition of the dwellings of the poorer classes was due to the people themselves.

Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Westminster wrote (1865–6):—

“It is much to be regretted that in certain districts of the parish only a temporary good is effected by a sometimes lavish expenditure on the part of the proprietor. The habits of the people are such that it is almost impossible to do anything for their benefit. Not only are they filthy in themselves, but they take every opportunity to break, destroy, and steal anything that may be of value, and what is even worse they appear to negative any sanitary precaution effected for their benefit.”

But the broad truth was that the real, the primary responsibility rested upon the “owners.”

Theirs was the property. And them it behoved to keep that property in a condition which was not a danger to the community and to the State.

The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel wrote (1865):—

“The duty and interests of landlords appear to be at variance as regards their doing to their houses what is absolutely necessary for the well-being of their tenants. It is unquestionably the duty of landlords to keep the houses which they let out in separate tenements to the poor in a healthy condition; but this is not always done even if compulsory orders are signed and summonses issued….

“Many of the landlords of small house property fully understand and carry out the rights of ownership, but fail to carry out the duties which are enjoined upon them as owners.”

The Medical Officer of Health for Islington, referring to some vile property in his parish, wrote (1863):—

“Landlords of such property as this will rarely do anything out of consideration for the health or lives of their tenants; compulsion alone will extort amendments. What is needed here is the closure of the fatal houses until made fit for human habitation.”

How an “owner” could manage his property can be gathered from the following report of the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington (1863), which called attention to “the insanitary condition of a block of houses (about thirty in number) which had been for many years notoriously liable to the invasion of epidemics and to the prevalence of those diseases which are the known product of sanitary neglect—badly constructed and dilapidated, and wanting in the commonest appliances of cleanliness. All were the property of one individual who had been repeatedly urged to put them in a proper sanitary state.”

But it was not until stringent compulsory measures were taken that he began to do so, and some years elapsed before they were really done.

Here is another dreadful case of overcrowding and insanitation—this time in St. Marylebone (1868).

Edwards Place:—

“Ten six-roomed houses occupied by 84 families, 277 persons, houses very dilapidated, many unfit for human habitation. Orders for sanitary work are continually being sent out by the Vestry to the owner of this wretched property.

“A rental of £10 per annum would be an extravagant sum to pay for either of these miserable dwellings, yet more than three times that sum is expected from the destitute and indigent people who inhabit them.”

Read by the light of the knowledge that insanitary property meant disease, and disablement, and death to a very high percentage of its occupiers, the proper compulsion to have applied to “owners” such as these would have been proceedings before a Coroner’s jury for culpable homicide if not for actually deliberate murder.

The community has a right to be protected from the evil results of the miserable housing of the poor.

Mr. George Godwin said in 1862, at the meeting of the National Association for Promoting Social Science:—

“It should be no answer to the requirement of a certain cubical space for each occupier, that the financial resources of the parties will not admit of it.

“A man is not permitted to poison with prussic acid those who are dependent on him because he is poor; neither should he be allowed on that ground to kill them with bad air and set up a fever-still for the benefit of his neighbours.”

Parliament, under the pressure of a slowly-developing public opinion, and in view of the ever accumulating evidence and proof of the almost incredible insanitary condition in which great masses of the people of London were living, was beginning to show less reluctance to discuss and deal with some of the multifarious matters affecting the public health.

In 1860 it passed an Act which, however well intentioned, was not of much effect. It was an effort to secure more wholesome articles of food and drink for the public by preventing their adulteration.

The past history of such legislation was rather interesting.[98] In 1731 an Act has been passed prescribing a penalty for “sophisticating tea.”

“Several ill-disposed people frequently dyeing, fabricating, very large quantities of sloe-leaves, &c., in imitation of tea, and colouring or staining and dyeing such leaves, and vending the same as real tea to the prejudice of the health of His Majesty’s subjects.”

“In year 1766–7 a further Act was passed inasmuch as ‘such evil practices were increased to a very great degree to the injury and destruction of great quantities of timber, wood, and underwoods.’

“Coffee had also been the subject of legislation, ‘burnt scorched, or roasted peas, beans, &c.,’ being used to adulterate it.

“In 1816 an Act was passed against the adulteration of beer and porter, and the use of molasses, liquorice, vitriol, quassia, guinea pepper, or opium, and a lot of other ingredients being prohibited.”

“In 1836 an Act was passed against the adulteration of bread.”

And now in 1860 it was enacted that “every person who shall sell as pure or unadulterated any article of food or drink which is adulterated or not pure,” should on conviction be fined.

The Vestries in the metropolis were empowered to appoint analysts. The appointment was voluntary on the part of the local authorities, and, if analysts were appointed, their duties were confined to receiving and analysing articles submitted to them by the purchasers, and certifying the results. The purchasers had to pay the cost. No officer was appointed to obtain samples or to enforce the Act. And the Act is therefore worthy of note more as an illustration of the inaction of the local authorities than for any effect it had as regarded the prevention of adulteration.

In 1863 Parliament passed the “Bakehouse Regulation Act,”[99] which enacted that every bakehouse should be kept in a cleanly state, should be frequently lime-washed, and should be properly provided with proper means for effectual ventilation, and be free from effluvia arising from any drain, privy, or other nuisance.

Also its use as a sleeping-place was prohibited, and the onus of enforcing the provisions of the Act was imposed upon the local sanitary authority.

And in 1863 it declared[100] that the law made in 1855 as to the inspection and seizure of unwholesome food—meat, poultry, flesh, fish, vegetables, fruit, &c., &c.—was defective, and that other and more effectual provisions should be substituted therefor; and others were accordingly substituted.

By an Act in 1864 the main principles contained in previous Factory Acts were carried a stage further, in some instances even to trades carried on in private houses.

“Every factory to which this Act applies shall be kept in a cleanly state and be ventilated in such a manner, &c., as to render harmless dust, &c.”

Unfortunately the main breakdown in the metropolis in regard to nearly all the ameliorative sanitary legislation of Parliament was directly caused by the very local authorities who had been specially created for the purpose of administering those laws. Primarily they were responsible for the failure of very much of that legislation, and they never seem to have at all realised, or been impressed by, the gravity of their trust, or by the great responsibility to their fellow-citizens which their position entailed.

Even in comparatively small matters their ingenuity in counteracting the intentions of the Legislature was remarkable, as can be seen from the following passage in a report of one of the Medical Officers of Health:—

“I refer specially to the Sanitary Acts, to the Adulteration of Food Act, and to the Metropolitan Gas Act, in each of which cases the powers entrusted to them have not been carried out.

“They appointed an examiner under the Adulteration of Foods Act (1860), and also under the Metropolitan Gas Act (1860), but the person appointed had no tools given him with which to perform the work entrusted to him.

“Both the Acts are dead letters in the parish. As to the Metropolitan Gas Act, it conferred a large benefit, both as to purity and cost, on the metropolis, but the Vestries failed to carry out a single effective or important provision of that Act.”

In 1860, also, an Act had been passed empowering the local authorities in the metropolis to provide vehicles for carrying persons suffering from infectious diseases to hospital, and so obviating the danger to the public of such persons being conveyed in cabs or other public vehicles. That Act was also inoperative.

The Vestries and District Boards, however, did perform a considerable amount of useful work. Local sewerage and drainage works were on the whole effectively dealt with. The rest of the work done was mostly of the routine order, such as scavenging and paving and lighting, though even that was not always done in the most sensible way, as exemplified in Paddington (1866).

“The street sweepings of mud collected by the scavengers are stored in enormous quantities in the middle of the parish in a closely inhabited neighbourhood. Here it is allowed to decompose, &c. If it were intended to contrive an arrangement for developing malaria in the midst of a town population nothing could be better adapted for the purpose.”

A few of them had soared to the height of widening a street, or acquiring some small open space; in most, if not all, of these cases receiving financial help from the central authority.

But as to the main causes of the prevailing insanitary evils, their aversion to active measures was constantly in evidence; equally so where the enforcement of the law would have entailed cost on the owners of insanitary houses.

In some matters the plea of defects in the legislation might have been justifiably urged by them; in others they were often much hampered by the dilatory procedure attending proceedings for enforcing the sanitary provisions of the Metropolitan London Management Act.

One of the Medical Officers of Health gives an illustration:—

“A very great nuisance was reported to us. We visited it, but had to wait a fortnight before the Vestry met in order to get leave to apply for a summons. The magistrate requires a week before hearing the case, and then he gives a week or two to do the work. So for a month or five weeks the nuisance may remain.”

The result was that infectious disease was given a long opportunity to spread itself unchecked through a whole district; an opportunity which it freely availed itself of.

Complaints were also made by some of the Medical Officers of Health that in attempts to enforce the law against “overcrowding” the magistrate leant very much to the landlord. This, too, might have acted as a discouragement to them. What, however, is certain is, that the Vestries and District Boards were not attempting to grapple with the most crucial questions of all—the overcrowding, and the housing.

The Medical Officer of Health for Clerkenwell pointed this out, so far as his parish was concerned (1861):—

“The principal sanitary improvements during the last five years related almost exclusively to the drainage, whilst the overcrowding and impure state of the dwellings of the poor have been but little interfered with.”

The more serious blemish was pointed out by Dr. Hunter in his report of 1865 to the Medical Officer of the Privy Council on the subject of overcrowding, and the removal of persons from houses about to be destroyed:—

“There is no authority which can deal with London in these matters as a whole, and they are matters in which uniform treatment is quite necessary. The local authority which finds the whole of its district overcrowded, naturally hesitates before beginning action which may relieve one house only to overfill the next, and may reasonably think that such action, unless done thoroughly, not only through the district, but through the whole capital, might prove hurtful.”[101]