ABSTRACT
In many northern cities, the industrial revolution produced powerful reasons for State intervention, in the form of an overcrowded population living in squalid, poorly constructed and insanitary homes. The new towns and cities had grown too rapidly for comfortable assimilation within the existing framework. They lacked even basic sanitary amenities, such as a proper water supply, and there was no adequate local government provision. Medical men were not slow to point out the connection between dirt and disease. J.P. Kay (later famous as the educational administrator Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth) presented a harrowing picture of early nineteenth-century Manchester (5a). It is noticeable, however, that Kay drew attention to the moral failings of the working classes, and suggested that much could be achieved by the directed development of more sober and provident habits. Edwin Chadwick’s 1842 Sanitary Report (5b) took the argument several stages further. With a wealth of statistical evidence, he demonstrated the differential effects on life expectancy of being born into a particular class and living in a particular environment. Chadwick viewed the problem partly in terms of the diminished efficiency of the nation as a consequence of high mortality rates and frequent debilitating illnesses, but his Report called unequivocally for the adoption of uniform standards to protect public health and to improve the moral condition of the industrial population. He also sketched out a programme of action on drainage, filth-removal and water supply.
