Edwin Chadwick & Public Health

The crisis brought about by the cholera epidemic of 1832 prompted the government to act.
Edwin Chadwick published the 'Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain' in 1842.
It contained evidence from doctors involved in the workings of the poor law.
1. Poor Law = Laws in the past setting out how the poor should be supported. Under the Poor Law in the 19th century, those needing support were sent to workhouses.
The information it contained about the squalor in which many working people lived and worked shocked and horrified the wealthy classes.
The picture painted by the report, together with statistics about birth and death compiled by William Farr, from 1839, made people realise that something had to be done about public health in Britain.
Chadwick was convinced that sickness was the cause of poverty.
He was supported by the findings of Dr. Southwood Smith who, in 1838, found 14'000 cases of fever among the poor of Whitechapel, London.

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