The Great Clean-up

Question 1

What act kick-started the great clean-up and in what year was it passed?

Answer 1

The Public Health Act of 1975.

Question 2

What was different about the 1875 Public Health act compared to the 1848 act?

Answer 2

It made it COMPULSORY for local councils to:
• Improve sewers
• Improve drainage
• Provide Fresh water supply
• Appoint medical officers and sanitary inspectors to inspect public health facilities.

Question 3

What did other laws, passed at that time, deal with?

Answer 3

• Housing standards
• Pollution of rivers, from which people got water.
• Working hours for woman and children
• Food health
• Compulsory education

Question 4

How did technology make the clean-up possible?

Answer 4

• To make the laws effective, hard engineering work was needed.
• The Industrial revolution advanced technology a huge amount.
• It provided new knowledge that made the work possible.
• For example: use of steam power, methods for building pipelines and embankments.

Question 5

What did the engineer Joseph Bazalgette do?

Answer 5

He designed and built London’s sewer system. Project started in 1859. The system included:
• 83 miles of main sewers, built underground from brick
• 1100 miles of sewers connecting each street, connected to the main sewers.
• A series of major pumping stations to drive the flow of sewage along pipes.
Project was finished in 1875.

Question 6

What other factors would prove invaluable to day to day people in their homes?

Answer 6

• The flushing toilet: at first only available to the rich. Flushed waste straight to the sewer network.
• Soap: tax taken off in 1853. Washing did more to kill germs.

Question 7

How far had Public Health reforms really improved public health?

Answer 7

• By 1900, towns were healthier with better PH facilities.
• People were beginning to live longer.
• Limit: poverty had not been dealt with and this was a major cause of ill health.
• Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree carried out studies that showed the link between poverty and ill-health.

Question 8

What did Booth and Rowntree discover?

Answer 8

• A third of families did not have enough money to pay for their:
o Housing
o Clothes
o Food
• Many were working but earned very low wages.
• The sick, unemployed and elderly received no help from the government, no matter how poor they were.