C9 - Improvements In Public Health Flashcards
What was industrialisation?
- Britain’s cities grew quickly from 1800. For example, Sheffield’s population of just 12,000 people in 1750 was over 150,000 by 1850.
- thousands of people moved from the countryside to cities like London, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester to work in the new factories of the Industrial Revolution
What were conditions in industrial cities like?
- a single factory would employ hundreds if people, so factory owners quickly built rows of ‘back-to-back’ houses
- many workers were squeezed into each house, often with five or more people living in one small room
- few of the houses had toilets, most were outside and shared with other families
- water for drinking and cooking came from a pump fed by the local pond or river, which would also take away sewage
- there were no rubbish collections, in street cleaners or sewers and no fresh running water
What were some health problems in cities?
- as a result of poor living conditions and overcrowding, diseases like typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera were common.
- in 1831, a cholera outbreak killed around 50,000 people. Victims were violently sick and suffered painful diarrhoea before dying
- there were further cholera epidemics in 1837, 1838, 1848, 1853-54 and 1865-66
- cholera was a waterborne disease but at this time many believed it was spread through the air, by miasma given off by rubbish and human waste
- this led some towns to clean up their streets, the importance of clean drinking water wasn’t understood
- governments in all major European nations were concerned about epidemics but didn’t know what to do about them
- a link has been made between poor living conditions and the rising death rate - but in the early 1800s people did not know what really caused disease
What was typhoid?
A disease spread by poor sanitation or unhygienic conditions; sewage would get into the water supply that people drank. It was caused by contaminated water or food.
What was tuberculosis (TB)?
A disease caused by germs passing in the air through sneezing or coughing. It spread rapidly in crowded areas; another type of TB was caused by infected cow’s milk.
What was cholera?
A disease spread by contaminated water or food. Several cholera epidemics swept the country in the early 1800s.
What was Chadwick’s report?
After cholera outbreaks in 1837 and 1838, the government set up an inquiry into living conditions and the health of the poor. They put Edwin Chadwick in charge. His report, published in 1842, shocked Britain. Twenty thousand copies were sold to the public. Although he believed in miasma theory, his resort clearly highlighted the need for cleaner streets and clean water.
What were the key points of Chadwick’s report?
- disease is caused by bad air, damp filth, and by overcrowded houses. When these thin* are improved, the death rate goes down
- medical officers should be appointed to take charge in each district
- people cannot develop clean habits until they have clean water
- a healthier workforce would work harder and cost the rich less in the long run
- laws should be passed to improve drainage and sewers, funded by local taxpayers.
What were the reactions to Chadwick’s report?
- the government did not act on Chadwick’s report because it believed in laissez-faire ideas that said it was not their job to interfere in people’s lives and force them to be hygienic
- MPs who rented out slum houses did not want the expense of having to tear them down and rebuild them
What caused the government to finally take action to improve public health?
There was another cholera epidemic in 1848 which killed 60,000 people. The government decided to act at last and passed a law, the 1848 Public Health Act
What happened under the Public Health Act?
- a Central Board of Health was set up to improve public health in towns.
- any town could set up its own local board of health, but this was not compulsory
- local town councils were empowered to spend money on cleaning up their streets
- some towns, such as Sunderland, Liverpool and Birmingham made huge improvements, while others did nothing
- by 1853, only 103 towns had set up a local board of health, and in 1854, the central board of health was closed down because government interference was strongly resented.
How did Dr John Snow discover the link between cholera and dirty water?
During a cholera outbreak in 1854, 20,000 people died. Dr John Snow noted that all the victims lived near the same water pump in Broad Street, Soho, London. He removed the pump handle so that everyone had to use a different pump. The outbreak stopped. He later found that a street toilet was leaking into the pump’s water source. Snow suspected that cholera was not airborne, but contagious and caught by contact with infected water.
What was the Great Stink and what did it cause?
In the summer of 1858, a heatwave caused the filthy river Thames to produce the Great Stink. This alarmed politicians so much that, combined with new evidence about cholera, they agreed to pay for sanitary improvements. Parliament gave the engineer Joseph Bazalgette enough money to build a new sewage system for London. By 1866, he had built a new 83-mile system which removed 420 million gallons of sewage a day.
What was the 1875 Public Health Act?
In 1867, working-class men were given the vote. Political parties realised they would get voted if they promised to improve conditions. In 1875, the Second Public Health Act meant that local councils had to appoint Medical Officers to be responsible for Public Health, councils were ordered to build sewers, supply fresh water and collect the rubbish.
