ABSTRACT
The medico-moral strategy was consolidated in the period after the initial reforms of the 1830s and 1840s. Environmental medicine, working in conjunction with religious principles of moral education, formed a dominant response to the problems posed by the working class in the period between 1850 and 1870. But the history of mid-century educational reform or the public health movement shows how partially the sanitary principle was actually enacted. The solutions, across a variety of fields of intervention, were the product of complex compromises between the various political forces in play. The radical programmes drawn up by the experts were severely qualified. Experts were themselves ‘educated’ into the political realities lying outside their own specialist domains. Central government intervention into public health, sanitation and housing was cautious and piecemeal in comparison with Chadwick’s conception of a centralised supervisory network. It is tempting, but completely illegitimate, to slide from analysis of the production of official solutions to their implementation. The two elements need to be understood as distinct and often disjointed moments of state policy.
