Page 7 - Smallwood Hospital

Smallwood Hospital Redditch Heritage

INTRODUCTION

Public Health is concerned with promoting and protecting health and well-being, preventing
ill-health and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society. This concern of some
people was apparent in the 1830s after the spread of cholera in Britain. The Times on 13
February 1832 stated that the real causes of the cholera disease were ‘poverty, bad living,
insufficient clothing, dirty streets and dwellings, united with occasional excess’. On
receiving the Report to the Leeds Board of Health the Leeds Board of Health came to the
same conclusion in January 1833:

We are of the opinion that the streets in which malignant cholera prevailed most severely were
those in which the drainage was most imperfect; and that the state of the general health of the
inhabitants would be greatly improved, and the probability of a future visitation from such
malignant epidemics diminished, by a general and efficient system of drainage, sewerage and
paving, and the enforcement of better regulations as to the cleanliness of the streets. 1

The findings of the Leeds report were also included in Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the
Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, published in 1842. He had
surveyed different areas around the country and calculated the average life expectancy of
people from different classes and areas. He included figures to show that in 1839 for every
person who died of old age or violence, eight died of specific diseases. This helps explain
why during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century nearly one infant in three
in England failed to reach the age of five. 2

Chadwick claimed that people living in the countryside lived far longer than people in towns.
He compared Rutland, a rural county with no large towns, with the new industrial cities of the
3
north.

Average life expectancy Professional trades Tradesmen Labourers
in years
Rutland 52 41 38

Leeds 44 27 19

Liverpool 35 22 15
Manchester 38 20 17

Bolton 34 23 18

1
Available at http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/publichealth/sources/source11/leeds3.html
[Accessed 26 March 2013]
2
Haley, B. (1978) The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
3
Available at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/victorianbritain/pdf/healthy.pdf [Accessed 26
March 2013]
Land, N. (1985) The History of Redditch and the Locality. Studley, K. A. F. Brewin Books.

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