ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the relevant urban public health developments over the span of the Victorian period in Britain between 1830 and 1900. It serves common background and a setting against which the river pollution case studies that follow may be seen. Edwin Chadwick was the major mover promoting the water carriage system and his work push-started the sanitary reform movement in Britain from the late 1830s. The water carriage system needed local government to exist, and local government found the water carriage system justified its existence. As the nineteenth century progressed, both local government and the water carriage system began to be able to provide what the other required. Such was the confused situation of provincial English town government administration before 1848 when Public Health Act passed into law. The Public Health Act of 1875, with its eleven parts and 343 sections, consolidated previous statutes over sanitation and simplified English local government structure concerning provision of public health activities.
