On hearing
this, the Board, at Mr. Chadwick's instance, immediately appointed Drs.
Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith to investigate the causes of this
alarming mortality, and to report generally upon the sanitary condition
of London. This inquiry at length ripened into the sanitary inquiry.
In the meantime, Mr. Chadwick had been engaged as a member of the
Commission, to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient
constabulary force in England and Wales. The evidence was embodied in a
report, as interesting as a novel of Dickens, which afforded a curious
insight into the modes of living, the customs and habits, of the lowest
classes of the population. When this question had been dismissed, Mr.
Chadwick proceeded to devote himself almost exclusively to the great
work of his life,--the Sanitary Movement.
The Bishop of London, in 1839, moved in the Lords, that the inquiry
which had been made at Mr. Chadwick's instance by Drs. Southwood Smith,
Arnott, and Kay, into the sanitary state of the metropolis, should be
extended to the whole population, city, rural, and manufacturing, of
England and Wales. Some residents in Edinburgh also petitioned that
Scotland might be included; and accordingly, in August, 1839, Lord John
Russell addressed a letter to the Poor-Law Board, authorizing them by
royal command to extend to the whole of Great Britain the inquiry into
preventible disease, which had already been begun with regard to the
metropolis.
Pages:
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453