In the metropolis the experience is similar. The mobs against which the police have to guard come from the most depressed districts; and the constant report of the superintendents is, that scarcely any old men are to be seen amongst them. In general they appear to consist of persons between 16 to 25 years of age. The mobs from such districts as Bethnal Green are proportionately conspicuous for a deficiency of bodily strength, without, however, being from that cause proportionately the less dangerously mischievous. I was informed by peace officers that the great havoc at Bristol was committed by mere boys.

The experience of the metropolitan police is also similar as to the comparatively small proportion of force available for public service from such depressed districts. It is corroborative also of the evidence as to the physical deterioration of their population, as well as the disproportion in respect to age. Two out of every three of the candidates for admission to the police force itself are found defective in the physical qualifications. It is rare that any one of the candidates from Spitalfields, Whitechapel, or the districts where the mean duration of life is low, is found to possess the requisite physical qualifications for the force, which is chiefly recruited from the open districts at the outskirts of the town, or from Norfolk and Suffolk, and other agricultural counties.

In general the juvenile delinquents, who come from the inferior districts of the towns, are conspicuously under size. In a recent examination of juvenile delinquents at Parkhurst by Mr. Kay Shuttleworth, the great majority were found to be deficient in physical organization. An impression is often prevalent that the criminal population consists of persons of the greatest physical strength. Instances of criminals of great strength certainly do occur; but speaking from observation of the adult prisoners from the towns and the convicts in the hulks, they are in general below the average standard of height.

Reverting to the observations as to the influence of adverse physical circumstances on the morals of the population, I must here include in the observation the younger portion of the population.

I might adduce the evidence of the teachers of the pauper children at Norwood to show that a deteriorated physical condition does in fact greatly increase the difficulty of moral and intellectual cultivation. The intellects of the children of such inferior physical organization are torpid; it is comparatively difficult to gain their attention or to sustain it; it requires much labour to irradiate the countenance with intelligence, and the irradiation is apt to be transient. As a class they are comparatively irritable and bad tempered. The most experienced and zealous teachers are gladdened by the sight of well-grown healthy children, which presents to them better promise that their labours will be less difficult and more lasting and successful. On one occasion a comparison was made between the progress of two sets of children in Glasgow, the one set taken from the wynds and placed under the care of one of the most skilful and successful infant schoolmasters, the other a set of children from a more healthy town district and of a better physical condition, placed under the care of a pupil of the master who had charge of the children from the wynds. After a trial for a sufficient time, the more experienced master acknowledged the comparative inferiority of his pupils, and his inability to keep them up to the pace of the better bodily conditioned children.

The facts indicated will suffice to show the importance of the moral and political considerations, viz., that the noxious physical agencies depress the health and bodily condition of the population, and act as obstacles to education and to moral culture; that in abridging the duration of the adult life of the working classes they check the growth of productive skill, and abridge the amount of social experience and steady moral habits in the community: that they substitute for a population that accumulates and preserves instruction and is steadily progressive, a population that is young, inexperienced, ignorant, credulous, irritable, passionate, and dangerous, having a perpetual tendency to moral as well as physical deterioration.

The group of cases of the mining population from Alston and Garrigill, it appears to me, will, when considered, afford an example of the powerful nature of the physical elements of deterioration. In that district the employers and persons of the higher classes have paid great attention to maintain the means of moral improvement. They have only not been made aware of the practicability or of the importance of sustaining the physical condition of the workpeople, as exemplified in respect to the same description of labourers at Camborne.

The duration of life amongst the mining population of the lead-miners at Alston and Garrigill, and the adjacent district, is about 14 years less than that given by the Swedish tables. Their physical condition was depressed. “The young men appeared very healthy, but exceedingly few of them,” says Dr. Mitchell, “were of a large size; and in general it may be said they are of a small size.” He states that in moral condition they are most exemplary:—

“The means of education in Alston parish are extensive: there is the grammar-school, the master of which must be acquainted with Latin, but he gives a general education; there is a charity-school, and a school kept by a master on his own account; there is the school of the London Lead Company at Nenthead, at which other children besides those of their own workpeople are allowed to attend. There is a school at Garrigill Gate, and one at Tynehead, and another at Leadgate; there are also many dame schools and 10 Sunday schools. * * * I procured the catalogues of several libraries, and the books are such as to convey valuable information, and are far superior to most of the works which are found in the catalogues of the institutions called literary and scientific in and about the metropolis. * * * As to the intellectual condition of the people, it is decidedly superior to that of any district of England of which I have any knowledge. The witnesses uniformly manifested a clearness of comprehension of the inquiries made of them, and gave distinct replies, and added of themselves other information hearing on the subject. Almost all of them could sign their evidence, and most of them wrote exceedingly well. * * * The evidence of the employers and the parochial authorities, as well as of the men themselves, fully proves that there is a very general sobriety, and that the contrary practice is exceedingly rare. * * * Offences against property are very rare. It may be doubted whether we may consider it a proof of the honesty of the people, that pigs of lead may be seen lying by the road sides and in the fells as much exposed as so many stones. There is no magistrate nearer to Alston than a distance of 14 miles. Offences against the law are very rare.”

Instances have been frequently presented in the course of this inquiry of the moral degradation of the children of workpeople, and of the workpeople themselves, who have once been what those miners now are in moral condition; but the cases taken from the pauper roll of the union will serve to show that even a good education will not, of itself, sustain such a body of workmen against the physical causes of depression. The group of cases of widowhood, when considered, will serve to show that the causes in question create the evils of which they are supposed to be natural correctives.

With such an educated class of workmen, the obtainment of a place and the wages of an adult must be the necessary preliminary to a marriage, and unless such place or wages were obtained, the young workman would either remain single or seek employment further a-field. But we will suppose, for illustration, that a casualty occurs, such as the last death on the list, J. M., where a young miner who has married and has a wife and two children is prematurely swept away by an epidemic at 21 years of age, leaving a widow and two destitute orphan children dependent on poor relations, or on the ratepayers. The first mentioned, say S. H., then takes the vacant place of work, marries, and is killed at 34 years of age by “an accident in the mine,” leaving a widow and seven orphan children. This third vacancy in the place of work is occupied by another miner H. Y., who marries and works until he is 45, when he is killed by “consumption,” leaving a widow and five children.

Such casualties do not of course actually so fall on any one place of work, but the vacancies so created in different places at the younger periods of life must be and are supplied by new hands coming into the employment, and marrying as a consequence of that employment, and the succession will fairly represent 1 he mode in which the vacancies created by the various causes of death displayed in the last table and in the other tables of the causes of premature widowhood and orphanage occur.

In works where the average period of working ability is extended to the natural period of superannuation, which the evidence shows that a combination of internal and external sanitary measures maybe expected to give, namely an average of full 60 years, the account for one place would be one superannuated workman and one widow, and a family of four or five well-grown children, who, having received parental care during that period, will probably all have obtained, before its termination, the means of independent self-support. Whereas with a population of only 15 or 20 years of working ability, the same place of work may during the same period have been filled by two generations and one-fourth of workpeople, not one of which has brought all the children dependent on it to maturity or a condition for self-support; and the account of widowhood and orphanage will frequently for the same place of work stand thus:—

That is to say, three widows instead of one, and three sets of stunted and unhealthy children dependent for such various periods, as those above specified, and competing for employment at the same place, instead of one set of healthy children arrived at the age of working ability for self-support. The occupation of the places of work by a comparatively young and procreative population, brought forward by the premature removal of the middle aged and the aged workers, by the various causes of premature deaths—the acceleration of births by premature deaths in infancy as stated in a preceding note—will, I apprehend, sufficiently clearly account for the generally increased proportions of births in those districts where the rate of mortality is high; and it will scarcely be necessary to give further illustrations of the dreadful fallacy which tends to an acquiescence in the continuance of the causes of pestilence and premature mortality as correctives of the pressure of population.”

Though the deaths from accidents bear only a small proportion to the deaths from disease, yet registries show that the scattered deaths from various descriptions of violence amount to an average of about 12,000 yearly, in England and Wales alone, or more than aroused the national attention in the late massacre of the troops of the empire during the war in India. The position which this class of causes occupy, in the production of destitute orphanage and widowhood, is shown in the previous tables; but these do not comprehend the whole of the effects; another class of which appear on examining the causes of pauperism: namely, the injuries which occasion permanent disablement. In an analysis of the causes of pauperism, by Mr. Simkiss, the auditor of the Wolverhampton union, the cases of which the subjoined is a list were apparent on the pauper-roll.

On examining the individual cases of deaths that are classed as incident to the pursuit of the chief branches of mining or manufacturing industry, or in transport whether by land or water, it has always been satisfactory to find that for the future, by care, the greater proportion of them are preventible. In the case of the mining accidents, one part of them appear preventible by care of the superior managers of the mines—in arrangements over which the individual workman has no control; the other portion, by intelligence and care on the part of the workmen; and this last class of cases again reverts back to the power, and therefore to the means of imposing responsibility on the employers in the selection of educated and intelligent workmen—of habits of sobriety, and care to qualify them for works of danger. But at present they are, in a great measure, relieved from responsibility by the charge incurred by the want of care being thrown on other funds raised from persons who have as yet no practicable means of protection or prevention. When continued and dreadful losses of life take place, in the face of examples of successful prevention such as might be collected from every part of the country, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if the branch of industry were charged with the pecuniary consequences of the losses assumed to be necessarily incident to it, generations would not be allowed to pass away in fear, recklessness, and misery without the early adoption of those means of prevention which self-interest would then stimulate. A frequent suggestion made upon the view of such casualties is that government inspectors should be appointed to inspect and direct and regulate machinery.

This subject was brought under consideration in the course of the proceedings of the Factory Commission of Inquiry, and it was then agreed that such a measure as that of inspection would only give an imperfect security, and would occasion vexatious interruptions, and that the least objectionable mode of interference, as well as the most efficient and just as a means of prevention, would be to charge a portion at least of the cost of such casualties upon the branch of industry. Subsequent observation, especially of the causes of pauperism, have strengthened my convictions of the soundness of the principle of prevention as stated in our Report, a passage from which I have submitted in the Appendix.^[31]

In illustration of the pecuniary cost of disease, as shown in the cost of remedies in Scotland, there are several documents. The late Dr. Cowan, the professor of Forensic medicine at Glasgow, gives one in which he states—

“If any arguments were wanting to arouse the community to the investigation of this important subject, they might be drawn from the heavy pecuniary tax which fever entails on the benevolent of our city, from the poverty, misery, and crime which this disease engenders. It is not possible, from the data before me, to give anything like an accurate calculation of the sums spent for the treatment of fever in Glasgow during the last twenty years. The following calculation intentionally falls considerably under the amount, to prevent every suspicion of exaggeration:—

To this amount fall to be added the expense of treating the poor in their own houses under the district surgeons of the burgh, and any sums expended by the heritors or the gorbals and barony parishes for similar purposes. But this sum must have been greatly increased by the demands of pauperism produced by fever, on our poor’s-rates, and on the private benevolence of our citizens; for the duration of the disease, and the period of convalescence which must elapse before an individual can resume his work will average rather more than six weeks, and when to this is added the difficulty of again finding immediate employment, we may safely assume that the 12,895 individuals treated in the fever hospitals during the last seven years, all, with few exceptions, depending on their daily labour and extending the benefit of that labour to others, were out of employment for a period of at least six weeks.”

The Rev. G. Lewis, the minister of St. David’s parish, Dundee, who has answered the queries issued by the Board, and very powerfully addressed the inhabitants on this subject, in the course of one of his addresses, observes that—

“Apart altogether from the waste of human life, and the indescribable suffering and sorrow which annually fall upon the working classes of Dundee from this periodical scourge, and viewed only as a mere matter of profit and loss to the mercantile and monied interest of Dundee, it were easy to demonstrate, that the expenditure of several thousand pounds per annum, in providing the means of cleanliness to this town, in the better cleansing of its streets, but, above all, of its back closes, courts, and lanes, and the clearing away of those pestilential masses of building which lie concealed from view behind the front lines of some of our principal streets, would have been rewarded by a saving to the community of a vast sum, which the ravages of disease and death have been, for the last few years, compelling Dundee to pay in a way its inhabitants think not of. That this may appear, I have brought into one table the number of cases of fever during the last seven years.

“Thus, in seven years, fever has fallen on much more than a tithe of the inhabitants,—choosing its victims here, as elsewhere, in the manhood of life, and compelling the citizens of Dundee to pay a tax frightful in the amount of personal sufferings and family bereavements.

“But it were a mistake to imagine that the sufferings and death of so many citizens are the only tithes which fever has compelled us to pay during the last seven years. Put wholly aside the details of domestic woe and personal suffering which 11,808 cases of fever have introduced into the families of Dundee in these seven years—omit all reckoning of the watching, want, and wretchedness, wrapped up in so many cases of acute disease, and the family bereavements implied in these 1,312 death—and let us view for a moment our fellow-creatures but as so many machines suspended from work by the derangement or destruction of the human machinery, that we may learn something of the probable money loss incurred by fever in these seven years.

“From Dr. Southwood Smith, the highest authority on these subjects, we learn that fully one-half of the cases of fever occur in the prime of life, when men are most useful either to their families or to society. Deducting then the 1,312 deaths from the whole number of cases, there will remain 10,496 cases of fever, the one-half of whom, at least, were adults,—that is, 5,248 persons in the prime of life, very many of them heads of families, had fever in these seven years. Now, the average period fever detains a patient from work, according to the same authority, is six weeks. Let us take the earnings in health of these adults at the average of 8s. weekly; and the loss of wages to these 5,248 adults, by six weeks’ fever, amounts to 12,595l.; and this, after excluding all under age, and all the deaths. But these cases, whether treated at home or at the infirmary, must be also loaded with the expense of medical treatment, which is estimated in our infirmary reports at 1l. to each case, that is, 5,248l. must he added to the loss by wages. But 5,248 cases of those under age remain to be accounted for; and, as fever rarely attacks mere children, but chiefly those either in manhood or approaching manhood, we may estimate the loss of their labour at the one-half of the adults, or 6,297l. 12s., and the expense of attendance and recovery at one-half also, or 2,624l.

“But how shall we estimate the pecuniary loss of 1,312 deaths? It seems a strange thing to go about estimating the money value of that which money did not give, and cannot restore when taken away; yet as there are those who understand better a profit and loss account than the arguments of religion and humanity, we shall attempt to estimate the money loss of these 1,312 deaths by fever.

“At least one-half, or 656 of these deaths, were deaths of adults, and very many of them heads of families, of which the 337 widows in St. David’s parish afford melancholy evidence.”

He then refers to an estimate made by Mr. M’Culloch, who, viewing a human being as a productive machine, reared to last a certain time, and to return so much more than he costs, estimates a full-grown workman just, arrived at maturity as having 300l. of capital invested in him. At the actual cost of maintaining and training a pauper child in England at the school in Norwood, 4s. 6d. per week, he will have had expended upon him at 21 years of age, 245l., or at 30 years, 350l.; but he supposes—

“The money value of these male and female adults to be just the one-half of this, or 150l., which makes the loss, by the premature death of these 656 adults, to be 98,400l.; and, if the remaining 656 under the age of maturity, yet approaching it, be taken at the half of the adults, or 75l. each, we have a loss of 49,200l. more; to which, if we add 1l. a-piece, or 1,312l. in all, for attendance and medical expenses, the Fever Bill of Dundee, during the last seven years, will stand as follows:—

“The poor, we are told, we shall always have with us, and so with disease and death. Yet the evils, both of poverty and disease, come in very different measures to different communities. As there is a poverty that is self-inflicted, and may be self-removed, so there is a certain amount of disease and annual mortality in every city that is self-inflicted; and the community that does not strive, by every available means, to reduce its disease and mortality bills to the lowest sum of human suffering, and the lowest rate of annual mortality, is as guilty of suicide as the individual who, Judas like, takes with his own hands the life God has given, and hurries unbidden into the presence of his Judge. The fever bills of the Scottish towns, contrasted with those of the English commercial towns, declare too plainly that man has not yet done his part in Dundee to avert this scourge of society; and, while fever is undoubtedly to be regarded as the visitation of God, it is also to be regarded as the visitation of God for the sin of neglecting a population fallen in character and habits.

In the following table are given the deaths in Dundee in seven years, and the rate to the population,—supposing the inhabitants in 1831 to have been 45,355 souls, and to have increased about 2000 annually, until 1839, when from bad trade the increase was checked:—

Thus, the average mortality in Dundee, during the last seven years, was 1 in 32 annually. * * * Here, then, in Dundee, the deaths annually are at least one-fourth more than over the rest of Scotland, Glasgow excepted, which seems to surpass Dundee in the waste of human life. If the deaths are a fourth greater, those diseases which are its harbingers must be many times greater than the deaths; and to this extent, at least, it was in the power of human means to have provided a remedy,—to have abated by one-fourth the physical suffering and mortality of Dundee, saved 2,952 persons from fever, and 328 persons from premature death, and reduced by a fourth part the pecuniary loss incurred during the last seven years,—in other words, to have saved 43,919l., or 6,274l. annually, to the profit and loss account of this city in the single item of fever.

“The statistics of small-pox in Dundee might be added to this bill of charges. It is sufficient, however, to allude to it. Last year, the deaths by small-pox were 77. In 1838, they were also 77; and in 1837, they amounted to 126. The number of cases, of course, must have been many times the deaths; by far the greater number under age and unvaccinated,—a neglect no longer confined to the Irish population.

“Though I am no medical authority, yet I am sure that I have every medical authority with me when I connect, as foremost amongst the causes of the enormous Fever Bill of Dundee that monstrous Tavern Bill, which last lecture I showed you was the worm in the bud of the happiness and well-being of its working classes. That Tavern Bill, according to the mean of three different estimates, amounts to 21,234l. a-year in my parish alone, and to 180,000l. a-year to all Dundee. In vain we cry out against the taxation of Government. While the words of complaint are on our lips, here is a vice of continual tasting and tippling in strong drink,—a private self-imposed tax, but heavier far than any public tax. It is this besetting sin that has been not only devouring the substance of the poor, but every year sowing the seeds of that enormous Fever Bill which for the last seven years has been taxing us, not only in purse but in person,—compelling every tenth man in Dundee during that period to pay the wages of six weeks’ labour, and to suffer all the langour, sickness, and oppression of six weeks’ fever, besides the bereaved widows and orphans, and the fatherless and motherless children it has left in Dundee.”

I now proceed to submit the reasons for believing that the immediate expenditure of so much money as would be incurred by the adoption of such of the remedial measures as appear to be available by the agency of any public administration would be sound measures of immediate economy, and of ultimate public gain: and also the grounds for believing that the same conclusion is applicable to the cost of those measures of prevention which, though directly or indirectly controllable by legislative authority, are within the province of private individuals to execute, such as the construction of the dwellings of the labouring classes.