‘The Law of The Board of Health’? Rhetoric, Failure and Public Health in the English Periphery, C.1848–1875

Abstract

Scant attention has been paid to public health in small, peripheral towns between 1848 and 1875, often because it elicited little physical or infrastructural effect in these places. Drawing on recent scholarship of the New Poor Law, this article argues that public health in this period was important in establishing a uniform rhetorical register, administrative process and a ‘public health thinking’. Statute and regulation were used to constrain local authorities’ alternatives, citizens adopted the register in complaint, and gained a new understanding of their rights to health. It argues that while public health did fail in this period, its lexicographical progress enabled the relative achievements post-1875.

Keywords:

• Britain
• nineteenth-century
• Public Health Act 1848
• nuisances removal
• Edwin Chadwick
• social reform
• poor law

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Edwin Chadwick, Report to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain : With Appendices (London : Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1842); Dorothy Porter, Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times (London: Routledge, 1999), 121–122.

2 Porter, Health, Civilization and the State, 126–128, 146.

3 Toke S. Aidt, Romola J. Davenport, Felix Gray, “New perspectives on the Contribution of Sanitary Investments to Mortality Decline in English Cities, 1845–1909,” Economic History Review, 76 (2023): 624–60; Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5–6, 44–6, 71, 79–81 (original’s emphasis).

4 Fraser Brockington, The People’s Health (London: Bachworth Press, 1955); S. E. Finer, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement (London: Longmans and Green, 1952); Royston Lambert, Sir John Simon, 1816–1904, and English Sanitary Administration (London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1963); David Roberts, Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960); Ursula Henriques, Before the Welfare State: Social Administration in Early Industrial Britain (London: Longman, 1979); George Rosen, A History of Public Health; René Sand (Eng. trans. by Rita Bradshaw), The Advance to Social Medicine (London: Staples Press, 1952). F. B. Smith’s, The People’s Health 1830–1910 (London: Croom Helm, 1979), and Anthony Wohl’s Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Guildford: J M Dent and Sons, 1983) are both significantly critical of the ’grand narrative’ of progressive public health, but do not entirely reject it.

5 Brockington, The People’s Health, 7–23, 58–9; Rosen, A History of Public Health, 120–8, 131, 283–4.

6 Christopher Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800-1854 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Christopher Hamlin, “Muddling in Bumbledom: On the Enormity of Large Sanitary Improvements in Four British Towns, 1855–1885,” Victorian Studies 32, no. 1 (Autumn, 1988): 55–83; Simon Szreter, “The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain’s Mortality Decline c. 1850–1914: A Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health,” Social History of Medicine 1, no. 1 (1988): 1–38; Simon Szreter, Health and Wealth: Studies in History and Policy (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2005), the latter collects together a number of Szreter’s articles on this theme from 1988 to 2005. Other works characterised by the author as revisionist include: Ann F. La Berge, “Edwin Chadwick and the French Connection,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 62, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 23–41; John V. Pickstone, “Dearth, Dirt and Fever Epidemics: Rewriting the History of British ‘Public Health’, 1780–1850,” Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, ed. Terence Ranger and Paul Slack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 125–48; Pamela K. Gilbert, The Citizen’s Body: Desire, Health, and the Social in Victorian England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007); Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1830–1864 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

7 Porter, Health, Civilization and the State; Tom Crook, Governing Systems: Modernity and the Making of Public Health in England, 1830–1910 (Berkley: University of California Press, 2016); Keir Waddington, “‘It Might Not Be a Nuisance in a Country Cottage’: Sanitary Conditions and Images of Health in Victorian Rural Wales,” Rural History 23, no. 2 (2012): 185–204; Keir Waddington, “Vitriol in the Taff: River Pollution, Industrial Waste, and the Politics of Control in Late Nineteenth-Century Rural Wales,” Rural History 29, no. 1 (2018): 23–44; James G. Hanley, Healthy Boundaries: Property, Law and Public Health in England and Wales, 1815–1872 (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2016).

8 Steven Cherry, “The Public Health Role of the Rural Medical Practitioners: Norfolk and Fife c. 1860–1914,” in Making a New Countryside: Health Policies and Practices in European History ca. 1860–1950, ed. Astri Anderson, Josep L. Barona, Steven Cherry (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010), 49–70.

9 Crook, Governing Systems, 3–4, 9, 62, 104–5, 108–110, 288.

10 Hanley, Health Boundaries, 10–2, 77–82.

11 Waddington, “It Might Not Be a Nuisance,” 185–6, 193, 9; Nigel Richardson, “The Uppingham Typhoid Outbreak of 1875–1877: A Rural Case-Study of Public Health Reform,” Social History of Medicine 20, no. 2 (2007): 281–96.

12 Waddington, “Vitriol in the Taff”; Hanley, Healthy Boundaries, 77–2, 87–8.

13 Hamlin, “Muddling in Bumbledom”; Waddington, “‘It Might Not Be a Nuisance’,” “Vitriol in the Taff”; Hanley, Healthy Boundaries. See also: Frances Bell and Robert Millward, “Public Health Expenditures and Mortality in England and Wales, 1870–1914,” Continuity and Change 13 no. 2 (1998): 221–49; Bernard Harris and Andrew Hinde, “Sanitary Investment and the Decline of Urban Mortality in England and Wales, 1817–1914,” The History of the Family 24, no. 2 (2019): 339–76; Aidt et al., “New Perspectives on the Contribution of Sanitary Investments to Mortality Decline in English Cities, 1845–1909.”

14 HC Deb, 9 March 1853, vol. 124, c. 1349; Natalie Carter and Steven King, “‘I Think We Ought Not to Acknowledge Them [Paupers] as That Encourages Them to Write’: The Administrative State, Power and the Victorian Pauper,” Social History, 46, no. 2 (2021), 117–4, 117–9; TNA: MH 6/1, General Board of Health: rough minute books, 27 September 1848. At its second meeting, the GBH order that the stationer of the Poor Law Board be engaged and seek the Board’s assistance in drawing up circulars.

15 Paul Carter and Steven King, “Keeping Track: Modern Methods, Administration and the Victorian Poor Law, 1834–1871,” Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, 40, nos. 128–9 (2014): 31–53.

16 Nuisances Removal and Disease Prevention Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. C.96); James G. Hanley, “Parliament, Physicians, and Nuisances: The Demedicalization of Nuisance Law, 1831–1855,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 702–732, 720, 728–9; HC Deb, 21 February 1848, vol. 96, cc 1023–4.

17 James G. Hanley, “The Public’s Reaction to Public Health: Petitions Submitted to Parliament, 1847–1848,” Social History of Medicine 15, no. 3 (2002): 393–411.

18 Public Health Act 1848 (11&12 Vict., c.63); The London Gazette, 8 December 1848, no. 20924, 4474; The London Gazette, 18 September 1849, no. 21020, 2850; TNA: MH 6/1, General Board of Health, rough minute books, September 1848 onwards.

19 TNA: MH 13/126/221, Charles B. Bornwll, Rector of Mileham, to the General Board of Health, 27 September 1849; Bornwell and others to General Board of Health, 23 April 1849; MH 13/50/141, Henry Hake, Vicar of Chilvers Coton to the General Board of Health, 16 November 1848; MH 13/53/3, Robert Trappes, town clerk of Clitheroe to the General Board of Health, 7 September 1849. The GBH’s practice was to remove the majority of signatures from petitions before binding them with other correspondence, so only some of the signatories’ names survive.

20 Mileham AP/CP, Statistics, Population, A Vision of Britain Through Time Website, https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10092541/theme/POP (accessed September 28, 2023).

21 R. J. B. Morris, Private Bill Legislation in the Nineteenth Century: Parliamentary Promotion from 1797 to 1914 (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022): 39; Hanley, Healthy Boundaries, 34–7; Hanley, “Parliament, Physicians, and Nuisances,” 720, 728–9; Naomi Tadmore, “The Settlement of the Poor and the Rise of the Form in England, C.1662–1780,” Past & Present 236, no. 1 (August 2017): 43–97.

22 TNA: MH 13/126/244, 245, Charles Wright, clerk to the Mileham Local Board of Health, to the General Board of Health, 14 February 1851 and the General Board's reply thereto, 17 February 1851; MH 13/137/7, George J Clark, Nuneaton to the General Board of Health, 29 December 1848; MH 13/137/31, John Estlin, clerk to the Chilvers Coton Local Board of Health, to the General Board of Health, 21 November 1850; MH 13/137/32, the General Board of Health to John Estlin, 26 November 1850.

23 TNA: HO 45/1682, Home Office registered papers, Poor Law (See also Unions): Method of carrying on work of Commission, 1846.

24 Hamlin, “Muddling in Bumbledom”; Hanley, Healthy Boundaries; Waddington, “‘It Might Not Be a Nuisance in a Country Cottage’,” “Vitriol in the Taff.”

25 Hamlin, “Muddling in Bumbledom”; Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, Britain, 1800–1854, 5–7.

26 TNA: MH 13/53/17, Thomas Bulcock, cotton spinner and manufacturer, and 33 others, Clitheroe, to the General Board of Health, 4 February 1849; The London Gazette, 21 June 1850, no. 21106, 1740–1741; Stephen Clarke, Clitheroe in its Railway Days (Clitheroe: J. Robinson, 1900), 63–4; ‘Nisi Prius Court. Monday (before Mr. Justice Wightman). Action for Libel. Robinson v. Heaton and Another’, Preston Chronicle, 14 August 1852, 2–3; TNA: MH 13/53/55, Thomas Bulcock to the General Board of Health, c. December 1851; MH 13/53/57, Robert Trappes to the General Board of Health, 12 December 1851.

27 The Times, Wednesday 23 February 1853, 8; TNA: MH 13/53/75, Henry Hall, Thomas Bulcock, Ralph Whitaker, Robert Dewhurst, James Heaton, and William Anderson, members of the Clitheroe Town Council and Local Board of Health to the General Board of Health, 27 February 1852; MH 13/53/90, John Robinson, surveyor, Clitheroe to the General Board of Health, 22 May 1852; The Ratepayers Advocate and Protector, no. 7 (Saturday 8 May 1852), in MH 13/53/88; MH 13/53/81, Robert Trappes to the General Board of Health, 30 March 1852; MH 13/53/104, John Robinson to the General Board of Health, 1 December 1852; L. Smith and H. Matthew, “Smith, Joshua Toulmin [formerly Joshua Smith] (1816–1869), publicist and lawyer,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, October 3, 2013, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-25873 (accessed September 29, 2023).

28 Shaw’s Union Officers’ and Local Boards of Health Manual, for 1854, ed. William Cunningham Glen, (London: Shaw and Sons, 1854): 167–70; TNA: MH 13/53/95, John Robinson to the General Board of Health, 31 May 1852; Preston Chronicle, 6 March 1852, 8; TNA: MH 13/53/79, 80, 97, 123, 124, 128, 129, 132, a run of letters between the General Board of Health, the Clitheroe Local Board and Robinson concerning his position, 18 March 1852-1 April 1853; “…Action for Libel. Robinson v. Heaton and Another,” Preston Chronicle, 2–3.

29 TNA: MH 13/53/85, Law Officers to General Board of Health, and internal minutes of the Board, April 1852; Peter Mandler, “Chadwick, Sir Edwin (1800–1890), social reformer and civil servant,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 3 January 2008, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5013 (accessed October 2, 2023); Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice, 324–329; TNA: MH 13/53/182, John Eastham to Local Government Act Office, 15 July 1871; Powys Archives: M/B/W/CD/1, Welshpool Sewage, 1866–1905.

30 Steven King et al., In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834–1900 (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022), 185, 328; TNA: MH 13/53/167, 168, 56, 58, 88, letters regarding Clitheroe sanitary state in 1852–1853 and 1870–1871; The Sanitary Act 1866 (20&30 Vic. c. 90).

31 TNA: MH 13/50/188, 189 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, letters between Castle, The Local Government Act Office and the Chilvers Coton Local board of Health, 1861–1864. The author has been unable to locate evidence of Castle pursuing the suit again the Chilvers Coton Local Board.

32 TNA: MH 13/50/184–185,188–189, 192; King et al., In Their Own Write, 129–30, 185; Hanley, Healthy Boundaries, chapter 2; Discovery, our catalogue, The National Archives Website, search for term ‘nuisances’ restricted to ‘metropolitan nuisances’ volume references. Available at: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_cr=mh+13/261%7Cmh+13/265%7Cmh+13/262%7Cmh+13/263%7Cmh+13/264&_dss=range&_l=7&_ro=any&_hb=tna&_q=nuisance (accessed October 3, 2023)

33 Nuisances Removal Act 1855 (18 & 19 Vict., c.121); TNA: MH 13/231/136, Wright to the General Board of Health, 3 September 1855; MH 13/231/137, General Board of Health to Wright, 5 September 1855.

34 TNA: MH 13/231/136, 137; MH 12/8480/119–21, 180–1, 189, 190–2, 263–4, letters between Wright and Poor Law Board, 12 September 1855–20 September 1856; Norfolk Record Office (hereafter NRO): C/GP 14/12, Mitford and Laundtich Poor Law Union, Guardian’s Minute Book, 346; C/GP 14/13, Guardian’s Minute Book, 182. Stannard’s name is deliberately left as a ‘____’ in the first mention of him in the minute books (although in no others). His father’s name is incorrectly given as James Stannard. In the draft minute book of the same period (NRO: C/GP 14/60) his name is provided, and his father’s name correctly stated as John Stannard. James seemingly died in 1869, aged 26, although it is difficult due to record survival to determine whether he remained in the workhouse until then (see: Longham Parish (Norfolk) Register of Burials, NRO: PD 672/8, 45).

35 Lawrence Goldman, “Social Reform and the Pressure of ‘Progress’ on Parliament, 1660-1914,” Parliamentary History, 37 (2018): 72–88, 74–5; Hanley, ‘Parlaiment, Physicians, and Nuisances’; King et al., In their Own Write, 6–7.

36 TNA: MH 12/8480/119, Charles Wright to Poor Law Board, 12 September 1855.

37 Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872-1989 (London: Routledge, 1994), 44–7; NRO: C/GP 14/12, 403-404, Mitford and Launditch Guardians Minute Book, 19 November 1855.

38 Crook, Governing Systems, 86–7 (see also, Edward Higgs, The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 84–5; George Eliot, Middlemarch (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1994), 78–9.

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Chris Day

Chris Day has worked at The National Archives (UK) since 2013. He was a record specialist, focused on records of local government, criminal justice and public order in the long nineteenth-century. He currently works on policy. Chris co-curated The National Archives’ 2022 exhibition, ‘Treason: People, Power, and Plot’, and co-authored the accompanying publication A History of Treason (John Blake, 2022). He is a PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University. His thesis focuses on public health in the west of England and Wales between 1830 and 1875. He lives in South London with his wife and daughter. Email: [email protected]