The state of public health in the first half of the nineteenth century Flashcards
housing and development
The Industrial Revolution led to the rapid growth of towns and cities. People wanted to live near factories but they couldn’t commute to work (no railway) so many poor houses were built by landlords and factory workers to deal with demand. they were often badly built just to make money.
government and parliment
An attitude of laissez-faire and voting rights only for the rich meant that government took no interest in living and working conditions. In many cases new industrial cities did not even have an MP.
disease
Infectious diseases spread rapidly, e.g. cholera, typhoid and typhus
living conditions
By 1800 living conditions in towns were probably as bad, and often worse, than they had ever been before. Housing was built with no rules or controls. Child labour and low wages led to high levels of poverty. Overcrowding, lack of sewerage, drainage and clean supplies of water led to appalling conditions and short life expectancy amongst the urban poor. .
Edwin Chadwick
1842 Chadwick, published ‘Report on the Enquiry into Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain’. This report outlined the major public health challenges facing England at the time leading to the beginnings of reform. His key findings included the argument that spending on public health would in the long term save the taxpayer money by cutting the cost of looking after orphans etc. thought disease was spread by miasma. It was given to journalists,writers, politicians and sold to the public.
John Snow
Famous surgeon working on Broad Street. He noticed many people were dying from cholera. He removed the handle of a water pump so people had to get their water source from somewhere else because the people who died got there water from there. The deaths decreased. He saw a toilet was leaking into the pump proving cholera was contagious (from person to person through water) not miasma.
Snow didn’t have an explanation for this because Pasteur’s germ theory hadn’t been published.
cholera epidemics
Cholera arrived in 1831. Britain was hit by repeated epidemics in 1831–1832, 1848, 1853 and 1866. This disease was spread through infected drinking water. It struck quickly and usually fatally. It highlighted the problems with lack of action over poor public health.
the great stink
1858
A heat wave caused the Thames to start smell because of all the dirt/pollution in it. This caused MPs to finally take action. They gave joseph balgazette moeny to build sewers all over London
Louis Pasteur
1822-1895
Pasteur saw germs were harming drinks like alcohol, beer and milk. Invented pasteurisation (heating drinks to kill germs) proved spontaneous generation wrong by pasteurising two liquids then bending one of the spouts so the germs wouldn’t reach them, so germs infect things turning them bad. 1861 published ‘germ theory’ and saw silkworms were being killed by a disease caused by germs in a silk factory.
reform act
1867 working class men given the vote. political parties believed that if they promised to improve conditions they would get lots of votes from working class
reasons for opposition to government intervention
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
some Victorians believed in ideas of self help and personal responsibility
local ratepayers didn’t want to pay to improve the lives of the poor because they said they were lazy/dunk and blamed the poor for their poverty
people who were opposed to change could make excuses because the germ theory hadn’t been published and miasma/spontaneous generation were popular.
