children learn their lessons for six hours daily over a floor under which 12,000 dead bodies are festering ! *

Mr. Chadwick produces a tabular account of the mortality of England and Wales within the year 1838, caused by diseases which, he says, medical officers consider to be most powerfully influenced by the physical circumstances under which the population is placed; namely, the external and internal condition of their dwellings, drainage, and ventilation. It appears that the number of deaths in this category amounted to 56,461: which Mr. Chadwick observes to be as if Westmoreland or Huntingdonshire were every year to be entirely depopulated. He adds:

'that the annual slaughter in England and Wales from preventable causes of typhus, which attacks persons in the vigour of life, appears to be double the amount of what was suffered by the allied armies in the battle of Waterloo ;....that diseases which now prevail on land did, within the experience of persons still living, formerly prevail to a certain extent at sea, and have since been prevented by sanitary regulations; and that when they did so prevail in ships of war, the deaths from them were more than double in amount of the deaths in battle.'

But whatever may be the precise number per annum of our labouring population that actually die from diseases which are preventable, it is evident that it bears but a small proportion to the number of those who-although they have, as it is commonly termed, escaped from the attack'-have been subjected for a melancholy period to loss of labour from debility.

Mr. Chadwick, having endeavoured to define in general terms the aggregate extent and operation of the evils complained of, proceeds to consider them separately in detail. We cannot say that he shows much skill in the grouping and arranging of his facts and views: but in a work so meritorious, it would be hard to dwell upon minor defects; and our readers will not quarrel with us for taking the chapters as they stand.

I. General condition of the residences of the labouring classes where disease is found to be the most prevalent.

Here are detailed the varied forms in which disease, attendant on removable circumstances, has been found to pervade the population of rural villages and small towns, as well as of those commercial cities and densely-crowded manufacturing suburbs, in which pestilence has been supposed to have its chief and almost exclusive residence.

For instance-to begin with one of the prettiest towns in one of the most charming parts of England-Mr. Gilbert reports that, his attention having been excited by the high diet recommended to

*See Evidence taken before the Committee of the House of Commons on the Improvement of Towns, &c.-printed in 1842.

the

the guardians at Tiverton, in consequence of prevalent fever, he requested the medical officer of the union to accompany him through a certain district there. Even before reaching this locality, he was assailed by a smell clearly proclaiming the presence of malaria: he found the ground marshy, the sewers all open, some of the houses surrounded by wide uncovered drains full of animal and vegetable refuse. The inhabitants were distinguishable from those of the other parts of the town by their sickly, miserable appearance: all he talked to either were or had been ill, and the whole community presented a melancholy picture. The local authorities had often endeavoured to compel the inhabitants to remove the nuisances and to cover the drains, but finding that, under the present state of the law, their powers were not sufficient, the evil had continued medical officers were employed instead of the engineer; and, accordingly, 'comforts' and 'high diet' had been prescribed, instead of masonry and drainage.

Impressed with the fact, that, as there are specks in the sun, so in a large country like England there must unavoidably exist dirty places, which Mr. Chadwick or any searching inquisitor has the power, at his pleasure, to point out, we read with considerable caution a series of reports such as we have just quoted. We own, however, we were not a little startled at learning that royalty itself but lately prevented from visiting Holyrood, or Brighton, on account of fever proceeding from miasma-has loathsome nuisances dangerous to the public health in its immediate neighbourhood even at Windsor !

Mr. Parker, after stating that there is no town in the counties of Buckingham, Oxford, and Berks in which the condition of the courts and back streets might not be materially improved by drainage, observes,—

Windsor, from the contiguity of the palace, the wealth of the inhabitants, and the situation, might have been expected to be superior in this respect to any other provincial town. Of all the towns visited by me, Windsor is the worst beyond all comparison. From the gasworks at the end of George-street a double line of open, deep, black, and stagnant ditches extends to Clewer-lane. From these ditches an intolerable stench is perpetually rising, and produces fever of a severe character. Mr. Bailey, the relieving officer, considers the neighbourhood of Garden-court in almost the same condition. "There is a drain," he says, "running from the barracks into the Thames across the Long Walk. That drain is almost as offensive as the black ditches extending to Clewer-lane. The openings to the sewers in Windsor are exceedingly offensive in hot weather. The town is not well supplied with water, and the drainage is very defective."

As snipes and wild fowl when they visit this country at once fly to our marshes and fens, so is it natural to suppose that the

cholera

cholera would, of its own accord, wherever it travelled, select for itself lodgings most congenial to its nature. The following glimpse of one of the places in which the disease first made its appearance deserves therefore attention. Mr. Atkinson, describing Gateshead, says of a person whom he found ill of the cholera

'His lodgings were in a room of a miserable house situated in the very filthiest part of Pipewellgate, divided into six apartments, and occupied by different families, to the number of twenty-six persons in all. The room contained three wretched beds, with two persons sleeping in each: it measured about twelve feet in length and seven in breadth, and its greatest height would not admit of a person's standing erect: it received light from a small window, the sash of which was fixed. Two of the number lay ill of the cholera, and the rest appeared afraid of the admission of pure air, having carefully closed up the broken panes with plugs of old linen.'

Mr. Chadwick, however, states that the most wretched of the stationary population of which he had been able to obtain any account, or that he had ever beheld, was that in the wynds of Edinburgh and Glasgow. It might admit of dispute,' he observes, but on the whole, it appeared to us that both the structural arrangements and the condition of the population in Glasgow were the worst of any we had seen in any part of Great Britain.' Dr. Arnott, who perambulated the wynds of Glasgow, accompanied by Dr. Alison and Dr. Cowen, corroborates the above statement by details too offensive to be transcribed: suffice it to say that from one locality 754, of about 5000 cases of fever which occurred in the previous year, were carried to the hospitals. As a striking contrast to this result, Mr. Chadwick states that, when the kelp manufacture lately ceased on the western coast of Scotland, a vast population of the lowest class of people were thrown into extreme want-they suffered from cold, hunger, and despair-nevertheless, from their scattered habitations being surrounded by pure air, cases of fever did not arise among them.

We will conclude this branch of the investigation by a description of Inverness, copied from no less an authority than the report of its worthy chief magistrate. Inverness,' says the Provost, is a nice town, situated in a most beautiful country.

The people are, generally speaking, a nice people, but their sufferance of nastiness is past endurance.'

II. Public arrangements external to the residences by which the sanitary condition of the labouring population is affected.

This chapter Mr. Chadwick principally devotes to practical details as to drainage. But we must content ourselves with a few more specimens of his observed facts.

Dr.

Dr. Duncan doubts whether there is a single court in Liverpool which communicates with the street by an underground drain: having observed that sixty-three cases of fever had occurred in one year in Union Court, containing twelve houses, he visited it, and found the whole court inundated with fluid filth which had oozed through the walls from two adjacent cesspools. In one cellar, a well four feet deep, into which this stinking fluid was allowed to drain, was discovered below the bed where the family slept. It may be observed that there are 8000 inhabited cellars in Liverpool, containing from 35,000 to 40,000 inmates; and that of 2398 courts which were examined, 1705 were closed at one end so as to prevent ventilation.

Until very lately,' says Mr. Burton, in his report on ‹ Edina, Scotia's darling seat,'

'the Cowgate, a long street running along the lowest level of a narrow valley, had only surface drains. The various alleys from the High Street and other elevated ground open into this street. In rainy weather they carried with them each its respective stream of filth, and thus the Cowgate bore the aspect of a gigantic sewer receiving its tributary drains. A committee of private gentlemen had the merit of making a spacious sewer 830 yards long in this street at a cost of 2000l., collected by subscription. The utmost extent to which they received assistance from the police consisted in being vested with the authority of the Act as a protection from the interruption of private parties. During the operation they were nevertheless harassed by claims of damage for obstructing the causeway, and their minutes show that they experienced a series of interruptions from the neighbouring occupants, likely to discourage others from following their example.'

In a medical report on romantic Stirling, it is stated that the drains or sewers, Scotticé 'sivers,' are all open; a few old men sweep the public streets from time to time, but sometimes the sweepings remain on the pavement many days; the refuse from the gaol, which contains on an average sixty-five persons, is floated down the sivers' every second or third day, emitting, during the whole of its progress, the most offensive odour; the slaughter-house being situated near the top of the town, the blood from it is also allowed to flow down the main street; and the sewers from the castle issue into an open field, polluting the atmosphere to a dreadful degree.

As a contrast to this wholesale account, the examination of Mr. T. Thomson, of Clitheroe, affords a striking proof how small, even in solitary houses, may exist the removable cause of disease. In the summer of 1839 some bad cases of fever occurring among a cluster of houses at Littlemoor, which had always been considered healthy, attention was drawn to the spot. An old halfchoked drain was discovered, which was the cause of a shallow

stagnant

Measures were

stagnant fetid pool of a most disgusting nature. immediately taken to carry off this nuisance by a sewerage, and from the hour of the removal of the filth,' says Mr. Thomson, no fresh case of fever occurred.'

Portsmouth, which is built on a low portion of the marshy island of Portsea, was formerly extremely subject to intermittent fever: the town was paved in 1769, and, according to Sir Gilbert Blane, from that date this disorder no longer prevailed, whilst Kilsea, and the other parts of the island, retained their aguish disposition till 1793, when a drainage was made, which subdued its force there also..

In the same chapter we have many very instructive details as to the pecuniary results of removing the refuse of towns.

It appears from the evidence of Mr. Dark, of Paddington, a person of respectable character, who for many years has been a considerable contractor for scavengering, &c., that with the exception of coal-ashes (used for brick-making), lees, and a few other inconsiderable items, no refuse in London pays half the expense of removal by cartage beyond a radius of about six miles. I have given away,' says Mr. Dark, thousands of loads of night-soil we know not what to do with it!'

When Mr. Chadwick visited Edinburgh with Dr. Arnott, they were both, without metaphor, led by the nose' to a certain stream properly enough called the Foul Burn,' from having been the aged receptacle of most of the sinks, drains, sivers, &c., of Auld Reekie. For a 'considerable time the character of this burn was repellent-and, accordingly avoided by poor as well as by rich, by young as well as by old, its contents flowed in mysterious solitude into the sea. Several years ago, however, some of the occupiers of the land in the immediate vicinity, instigated by self-interest, took the liberty of tapping this stream, in order to collect a portion of its contents into tanks for manure. The next step in the march of intellect was, by means of water, to irrigate the meadows from this source, in order to save the expense of cartage; and thus, by degrees, 300 acres of meadow land, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Palace of Holyrood, were fertilized from the contents of this common sewer: the result of which has been that some of these meadows are let at from 201. to 30l. per acre; indeed, in the year 1838, some were let at 381. per acre, and in 1826 at 571. Her Majesty's Government, however, being justly of opinion that this process is prejudicial to the healthiness of Holyrood House, and having accordingly directed legal process for the trial of the right of irrigation, the defendants now plead that the invalidation of their claim would deprive the city of the milk and butter of 2 G 3000

VOL. LXXI. NO. CXLII.