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Private Property and Public Health Reform in England 1830-70 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by MURAL - Maynooth University Research Archive Library Sot. Sci. led. Vol. 26, NO. I, pp. 187-199, 1988 0277-9536188 $3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights rese~~‘cd Copyright C 1988 Pcrgamon Journals Ltd PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PUBLIC HEALTH REFORM IN ENGLAND 1830-70 GERRY KEARNS Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, P.O. Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX, England Abstract-British cities of the mid-nineteenth century were insanitary. In many cases lack of street paving, insuflicient water, proliferating cesspools and open sewers turned them into cloying, degrading and offensive mires. Many of the urban workers, too poor to pay rent sufficient to meet the costs of these environmental services, were shuffled among damp dingy rooms into which the sun shone feebly and in which their physical odours were confined against any draughts. The relations between landlord and tenant were circumscribed by the indebtedness of the former and the penury of the latter. Water, sewerage and housing standards were left to the sway of the market while the effective demand for them was limited by low real wages. In the largest cities this filth was dangerous as well as offensive and public health reforms became ever more pressing. Yet the form in which this legislation was secured and the manner in which it was implemented were not as straightforward as this sketch of their crying necessity might suggest. In this paper, the English public health movement of characterise the reforms that were achieved: did they the mid-nineteenth century is considered as part of aim to enable or replace private markets? The con- two histories: the history of government growth and fusion extends to the proper characterisation of the the history of environmentalist ideas. The emphasis role of the most important public health reformer of here is on how these ideas were incorporated in the age, Edwin Chadwick. Chadwick was the arche- coherent arguments for state intervention in the type of the new state servants, or bureaucrats, who urban environment. Existing studies of public health staffed and animated government growth in the nine- reform document the main stages in the development teenth century. Between 1834 and 1854 he was central of public concern and the extra-parliamentary pres- to most state innovations in social policy. Portraying sure for legislation. It is widely recognised that public Chadwick as the fountain head of the welfare state, health reform took very great risks with the sanctity historians have been unsure where to place his brand of property and that, as Henriques has written, of collectivism on a continuum running from capital- “public intervention for health purposes meant inter- ism to socialism. Given the importance of an accurate vention in the management of private property, since appreciation of the scope and limits of the modem the seventeenth century the sacred cow of all sacred state for modern politics and the common presen- cows” [l]. It is also well established that in addition tation of its commitments as a set of historically- to the general opposition to restricting the free play acquired responsibilities, this uncertainty is of more of the market, there was a particular resentment that than academic significance. the rights of local property owners to manage their This paper offers one perspective on this problem. collective affairs in autonomous local authorities It examines how arguments for enviromentalist pub- were being attacked. Bruce, for example, has noted lic health policies were put together. It is suggested that “there was much resistance to government inter- that these show a great sensitivity to precisely the ference in local affairs, even in such a matter as public paradox outlined above and that state intervention health” [2]. Bruce referred to the parliamentary activ- could be made compatible with private markets only ity bounded by the Public Health Acts of 1848 and at the cost of relating public health problems to 1875 as “the period of environmental sanitary legis- market failure and thereby conceding that there were lation” [2, p. 111. O’Riordan has claimed that “it is important sectors of the economy where the market generally accepted that ‘public health’ is a major could not be trusted to hold sway. The attack on collective goal” and has even placed it second only to private property was instead presented as an abdract national security in a “hierarchy of national goals” defence of the virtues of free markets and the dangers [3]. Clearly, the enviromentalist public health move- of imperfect ones. This defence was placed within a ment must be counted as a great success. A society broad cosmology emphasising the harmony between dedicated to the pursuit of private profit conceded the free markets, nature and mortality. Here, this is need to restrain the activities of urban property presented as an attempt by Chadwick to accumulate owners in the interest of more health living. Yet in the enough pertinent affirmations of his policy and avoid histories of public health reform this paradox is rarely the crippling effects of running into relevant ideo- met head on. How was it possible for reformers to logical sanctions of his policy. In this regard, theories square the circle of collectivism and private enter- of market behaviour, of disease and of government prise? We know today that the two have proved were all of a piece and became interdependent parts compatible but the Victorians experienced the con- of the case for reform. Three themes are developed in tradiction as the yawning possibility of the demise of the paper: that public health reforms restuctured the ethics of the market. Failure to confront this property rights; that these rights structured the re- question directly makes it impossible to accurately forms to which they became subject; and that these 187 188 GERRY KEARNS reciprocal developments were basic to the growth of attempt to control venereal disease by regulating government. As statement of fact, all three themes are prostitutes. In the main, though, the greatest atten- probably self-evident and the aim of the paper is to tion was paid to the responsibilities of property. explore them and their significance rather than to Landlords had their right to accept a fair price for an show that they are true; the focus here is not on offered product tampered with. From the bye-laws of whether but on how. The paper is in four sections. In the 1840s through to the rights of local boards of the first, the point is made that nineteenth-century health under the 1848 Public Health Act to approve public health reforms were environmental regulations building plans, the quality of the product to be sold which took the responsibilities of property as the was regulated. And this at a time when the links proper focus of intervention. In the second, the way between building costs, rents and wages were well that property was the medium for sanitary activity is recognised. Then, the rights of the house-owner to briefly described. In the third, the way that the case lease out his premises were subject to controls on the for reform negotiated the veto implied by the in- habitation of cellars, the degree of overcrowding violable rights of property is explored. Finally, the allowed under the 1851 Lodging Houses Act and ideological sway of private property is considered as even, under the 1848 Public Health Act, the extent to an aspect of its political dominance. which tenants could accept a service, with respect to drainage, sewerage and water supply, which might convert the property into a health hazard. Further- ENVIRONMENTALISM AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY more, certain specific land uses came under closer scrutiny with the driving out of towns of pigkeepers The environmentalism of nineteenth-century social and cowkeepers, under the Nuisances Acts from thought is widely recognised. Malthus drew attention 1846, to say nothing of holding urban industries to the biological basis of society and, despite the accountable to every twitching of the sanitary in- ideological sway of the economics of pure com- spector’s nose. petition, there proved to be no going back on this Some of these new responsibilities fell to the urban finding. As biological phenomena, people were local authorities. The General Board of Health, clearly influenced by their environments. Buckle under the 1848 Public Health Act, was empowered to wrote of the environmentalist influences on religion permit local authorities to raise unheard of sums on with superstitious Catholics living in the frightening the security of the rates in order to undertake drain- vulcanic Mediterranean lands and cool rational Prot- age, sewerage or the provision of a municipal water estants living on the tectonically more stable north supply. The Board was under an obligation to see European plain [4]. This line of reasoning was so first whether private enterprise might provide ade- pervasive that all sorts of issues became ‘environ- quate services but these services could, then, by mentalised’ allowing people, for example, to seek default, be developed under municipal ownership. architectural solutions to moral problems. Public Outside port cities, this was an unprecedented exten- health reform was clearly an environmental issue in sion of municipal property-holding and was different the strongest sense. The regulation of the environ- in kind from the corporation-based control of the ment, here, meant controlling property as opposed market place which made up the greater part of to controlling people. This is in clear contrast to a communal ownership in the early modern town. public health strategy based principally on control- Furthermore, since these new properties were ulti- ling the movement of people through quarantine.
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