ABSTRACT
The effects of the interventions which Sir Edwin Chadwick initiated have been momentous. It is not merely that the forms of prevention and regulation for which he provided the blueprint have now become the standard instruments of government, the major tools of social and economic policy. What it is difficult now to comprehend is that the very notion of such interventions, and of their planned use to produce certain effects, did not exist before this time; that the processes of social engineering he started were thus the bases on which not only the Welfare State but also Keynesian economic measures are founded. Chadwick applied many of the features of factory management to the government of cities. At the level of compensatory benefits what is different about modern Welfare State interventions from anything that Chadwick would have recommended is that the overtly punitive measures he considered essential were removed..
