S: S.E.Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, London: 1951
L: R.A.Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement 1832-1958, London: 1952
B: A.Brundage, England's Prussian Minister, London: 1988
ER: Edinbrugh Review
LR: London Review
WR: Westminster Review
| 1800 | Born |
| 1817 | Enters attoney's office |
| 1823 | Admitted to Middle Temple |
| 1824 | Meets Arnott and Sownthwood Smith |
| 1828 | On the Measure of Incurance (WR): Reprinted 1836. It reveals his early interest in statistics. He had already formulated the theory which underlies his public health work, that is, the principle that length and healthiness of life are determined by the circumstances in which it is lived. He quotes Villerme: "the gradations of wealth, or the means of providing comforts, may almost be taken as the scale of mortality". An investigation into the conditions of the working class would be an "invaluable acquisition to science, and would direct the public exertions in removing those circumstances which shorten life, and in promoting those under which it is found to attain its greatest duration" [413; L 33]. |
| 1829 | On a Preventive Police (LR) |
| 1830 | Introduced to Bentham |
| Medical Charities in France (LR) | |
| A Code for the City of London Scientific and Literary Institute | |
| Southwood Smith, A Treatise of Fever: | |
| 1831 | Becomes sub-editor of The Examiner |
| The Taxes on Knowlwdge (WR, July) | |
| The Real Incendiaries and Promoters of Crime: Reprinted from The Examiner, 20 Feb 1831. | |
| 1832 | Nurses Bentham during the last illness |
| Appointed Assistant Commissioner to PL Enquiry | |
| 1833 | Extracts of Information: His report on Poor Laws in London and Berkshire published in it. [Brougham] suggested that to give the Cabinet preliminary data each Assistant Commissioner should select his most representative findings; and that to prepare pulic opinion for the huge changes which Senior assured him were necessary, these Extracts of Information should be published, widely advertisedm and circulated free to all the influential [...] Chadwick's contribution was late [...] It was no selection of Extracts but a complete Report [...] (F 47, see ER: 47 by Chadwick).[...] all the evidence shows Chadwick as innovator and Senior as his eager and loyal collabolator (F 48). Over 15,000 copies of it disposed of. |
| Notes of the Heads of a Poor Law Bill (MSS 1833): The executive arrangements were more fully worked out. It was circulated to the members of Commission as the basis of a draft Report (F 48). | |
| Appointed Royal Commissioner to the PL Enquiry: After the Notes circulated to the Commissioners, he was asked to draw up a draft outline of the measure proposed to be embodied in the General Report. Senior ueged it to be unfair unless the Commissioners were prepared to recommend that he be appointed full Commissioner (F 49). | |
| Appointed Royal Commissioner of Child Labour Factories: Drafts Factory Bill. | |
| Resigns sub-editorship of The Examiner: | |
| Kay, The moral and physical condition of the working classes employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester : | |
| 1834 | Drafts Part II of the Report of the PL Enquiry: For Chadwick, the New Poor Lae was the first great piece of legislation based upon scientific or economical principle, scientific as labourious inductions from a large mass of facts (Bowring viii 440). He undertook the investigation of Buckinghamshire, Sussex and Hampshire. He left voluminous evidence, only the part of which was published (Appendix A, iii, to the Report of the Royal Commission, 1835). The published part was devoted exclusively to repressive measures to destroy the allowance system. He meant these to be accompanied be collateral aids, that is, measures to make the law more popular. The unpblished part includes these measures. It shows his deeper sense of the causes of pauperism than the 1834 Report would show. He was the only investigator to look into the health of the pauper population; showing the relationship between insanitary housing and excessive sickness and mortality. He wrote spending money on the improvement of the dwellings might prove an economy. He also analysed the relation between pauperism and intemperance, but his view was so optimistic as to suggest liquor consumption might fall if town population had public parks and zoos, museums and theatres. But he didn't press these measures and views into the Report because he thought it to be done after his being entrusted for execution of the New Law (F 69-70). R.A.Lewis emphasizes the change in his understanging of the causes of pauperism. The change appeared in his engagement with the enquiry of disease. The "main causes of pauperism were not personal but social, [...] the pauper was usually the end-product of social processes over which he had nomore control than he had over the weather, then a punitive treatment of paupers was no more just and sensible than a punitive treatment of lunatics, whom an earlier age had considered in some way responsible for their condition" [L 37]. On his science and method of investigation, see L:11-13. Both Finer and Lewis called attention not only to repressive but also to benevolent aspect of Chadwick. "Social Control" school gives to it a different interpretation. Each strand should not be understood to be separate but under the rubric of "Social Police"(B:28 and Donajgroski 1977). Anyway Prevention was a key concept of his policy planning. |
| Drafts Cabinet Memorandum (Measures submitted to H.M.Government): Based on the Notes of 1833. | |
| The Poor Law Report published: February 1834. He wrote the remedial measures and devised the local administrative system of unions of parishes. "The icy logic of the report was enlivened and made more readable by the ample use of quotations and case studies, an approach that Chadwick followed in all his official reports"(B: 35) | |
| Accepts post of Secretary to the Poor Law Commission: For the first three months he was indispensable. He attended all the meetings and read all the documents adressed to the Commission. But Lewis was astonished at the Secretary's domineering manner and soon became obsessed with the idea he was aiming to get all the Borad's business into his own hand(F 117-118). | |
| 1835 | Excluded partialy from Board meeting: He complained of the slow rate of unionization and Lefevre's lack of undersanding of the less-eligibility principle (the Commissioner suggested parished to hire out their paupers to dig private farmers's land at less than ordinary wage). He proposed to issue a new Consolidated Order in order to prohibit all outdoor relief. Lewis thought it impractical to supress outdoor relief completely(F 120-122). The outdoor-relief prohibitory orders issued by the commission were riddled with exceptions. Subsequent orders allowed the sbstitution of an outdoor labour test for the workhouse test for the able-bodied.[...] Lefevre replied to a query on the protracted unemployment problem from a guardian that the 52nd clause of the act automatically provided a loophole, "so that any special exception for such cases in our Rule became unnecessary"[B:45-46]. |
| 1836 | Assists in Registration Bill: The Act was not of his suggestion at all. But he was quick to see its possibilities and gave to Russell his suggestion for its improvement(ER 1836). Two significant success were gained: the registration districts were made coincident with the Poor Law Unions, and the registers were to record not only the fact of death but also its causes(F 124-125). |
| Appointed Royal Commissioner of Rural Constabulary: | |
| The Pronciples and Progress of the Poor Law Amendment Act (ER): Reprint 1837. Although the commission's annual reports were Chadwick's major literary undertaking during these years, he by no means neglected non-official channels of publication.[...] he was beaten to the punch by Major Francis Bond Head, the most flamboyant and eccentric of the assistant commissioners. Heas managed to get the Tory Quarterly Review to published a highly favourable account of the act's implementation in Kent [LIII April 1835], but Chadwick found fault with the article's somewhat flippant and satrical tone. He admitted to Macvey Napier, the editor of the Whig Edinburgh Review, that the Quarterly article had "created a considerable impression", but cautioned him "that it would not be befitting the Edinburgh Review to notice the subject in a jejune and hastily written article".[...] Chadwick sought to win them over in his own article by insisting that the New Poor Law was not really a centralizing measure [B:43]. "[...]what government has done does not supersade, but on the contrary strenghthen and systematises the local govenment, and gives greater power to the representatives of the people, in other words to the people themselves against narrow and petty oligarchies. It apears to me to be of some importance to a Liberal government that something should be said to meet the wild outcries on the subject"[ibid.] The New Poor Law, he declared, was "a measure by which strong local administrative bodies of representative have been created over the greater part of the country, where nothing deserving the name of systematised local administration has heretofore existed"[B:43-44]. | |
| 1837 | Select Committee of the Poor Law Amendment Act: [F 129-35;B 50-52] The Whigs were not insensitive to the cruelty issue, and with a packed committee it would be possible to fashion a report vindicating the law and the government. Russell insisted that the investigation be confined to poor relief under the orders and regulations issued by the Commission. The Poor Law Commission was placed in a position of possible scapegoat. It was not only boards of the guardians that would be encouraged to water down the principles of 1834. In August, the commissioners issued a new draft circular spelling out and expanding the exceptions to the ban on outdoor relief to the able-bodied, and sanctioned the practice of taking children into the workhouse without their parents[B:52] The second report was issued in August, declaring the act's implementation to be successful only to the extent that harsh rukes had been relaxed when necessary. It endorsed taling children into the workhouse while their parents received out door relief, substituting ourdoor labour for the workhouse test, and other practices abhorrent to strict constructionists [B:53} |
| Plan to introduce a Bureau of Medical Statistics: He wished to conduct an enquiry as to the proportion of sick paupers thrhoughout the Unions . Lewis was agains any deep-seated enquiry into the effect of sickness on poor rate. Much attention to epidemic diseases: The effects of epidemic influenza and typhiod ravaged London in 1837-8. It proved impossible to isolate the administration of the Poor Laws from the effects of the diseases. The East End Unions were forced to spend their money, although this was illegal. When the auditors disallowed such payments, the matter was brought to the Commission. Chadwick's view on this problem in F 155. He pressed for a medical enquiry [F 156]. And his reminiscence found in his letter to Southwood Smith [EC to Southwood Smith c.1848] His distrust of curative medicine: Curative medicine was for him "nothing but consolatio animi,... pretending to alleviate disease which if they [the doctors] had the will they had not the skil to prevent" [EC to Kay-Shuttleworth, 15 May 1843]. "From Arnott and Smith I derived a strong conviction of the superior inportance of the study (as a sciece) of the means of preventing disease, and I was the better enabled to perceive some of the important relations of the facts expressed by vital statistics which were brought before me in my public investigations" [EC to Dr Willis, 31 July 1844]. He opposed the appointment of a Medical Commissioner to the Poor Law Commission (in 1839). See also [F 158];[F 190];[F 218];[EC to Russel 12 June 1840]. On the medical profession during the early Victorian age see [L 76-78]. | |
| Evidence of the Rev. W. Stone and other witness as to the Operation of Voluntary Charities: | |
| 1838 | Fourth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners: The reports of the medical enquiry appeared as Appendix. Kay and Arnott, On the prevalence of certain physical causes of fever in the Metropolis which might be prevented by proper sanitary measures and Southwood Smith, On some of the physical causes of sickness and mortality to which the poor are particularly exposed and which are capable of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel Districts, as ascertained on a personal inspection [F 156-157]. Finer states that at this stage Chadwick's view on sickness were narrow, since the prevention of disease was only another administrative device, a mechanical solution of an administrative problem. Where the evils were 'ascribable to physical causes', it was 'good economy' to 'prevent the evils', instead of indicting the parties for nuisance and paying the expense out od the Poor Rates. Dominated solely by the actuarial problems of pecuniary profit and loss, he "laid no claims to universal humanitarianism but frankly admitted his narrow interests in keeping the poor rates down" [F 157]. |
| His views on pauper education: He supported something like universal education, but its reason is completely utilitarian, that is, pauper children should be made into productive citizens and prevented from becoming permanent inmates of the workhouse. E.C.Tufnell and James Kay, ACs, assisted hi. In his report on the Training of Pauper Children he broached the plan of district school, alleging that internal classification of workhouses could not provide schools either big enough or well conducted enough. A union of unions be needed. But the Commissioner, hitherto encouraging the educational enquiry, now began to retreat(F 150-3) Finer quoted the following passage of the 1834 report: "[...] as soon as a good administration of the Poor Laws shall have rendered further improvement possible, the most important duty of the Legislature is to take measures to promote the religious and moral education of the labouring class". Finer seemed to confuse the labouring class with pauoer or pauper children. | |
| His views on investigating epidemics in London: In 1839 he was a Secretary in name only. With Lewis's final victory and the destruction of all his influence in the office, Chadwik betook himself exclusively to this field (F 154). Already in 1836, when his Essay on the Means of Insurrance, his strong interest in the prevention of disease was shown (ER 1836). A passage of a document drafted by him in 1837 shows his recognition of importance of preventing deseases (see 1837 and F 147-8) | |
| His application for full Commissionership refused: (F 144-6) | |
| Forward to Bentham's Observation [Bowring viii,440] | |
| 1839 | Fifth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners: Dr Smith's supplement to On the Prevalence... included as Appendix C. Chadwick's claim to further investigation supported by the Houses, though Lewis was still resentful of him. "But he hesitated. All through the session of 1839 he was occupied with Constabulary Bill" [F 162-163]. Sowthwood Smith's summary of the tenor of al three reports [F 161-162]. |
| The First Report of Rural Constabulary published: The report almost identical with the heads of his 1829 proposal with his appeals to Bentham and the French Code canceled. Only English precedents cited [F 167-74]. | |
| Investigation for Sanitary Report begun: Chadwick approached Bishop Blomfield, and on 19th August the Bishop rose in the House of Lords, putting forward the motion: "Her Majesty will be pleased to cause enquiry to be made as to the extent to which the causes of disease stated in Appendix A, Number I of the Poor Law Commissioners Fourth Annual Report, and Appendix C, Number II of their Fifth Annual Report, to prevail amongst the labouring class in the Metropolis, prevail also amongst the labouring class in other parts of England and Wales, and [...] Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to cause the results of such enquiry to be communicated to the House". Two days later Lord John Russel commanded the Poor Law Commissioners to set the enquiry afoot [F 163]. | |
| [George Lewis succeeded his father Falkland Lewis (at the end of the session this year) ] | |
| 1840 | His application for full Commissionership refused: (F 119) |
| Select Committee on the Health of Towns: Obtained by Robert Aglionby Slaney. Normanby inroduced three bills based on the report of Slaney Committee: for the improvement of certain boroughs: for rgulating buildings in karge towns: and for the better drainage of large towns and villages. But they were "fell to pieces in Committee" [L 39]. Scavenging was to be improved, sewers and surface drainage introduced onto the courts and alleys, the dtreets were to be widened and ventilated, but above all, there was to be a Metropolitan Building Act. These suggestions were confirmed and greatly elaborated by the Slaney Committee [F 210-211]. The years 1839-41 mark a watershed in his thought. It shifted the emphasis from the improvement of the dwelling-house to its external sanitation and drainage. FUrthermore, it propounded a system : house drainage, main drainage, paving, and street-cleansing were now to be considered as integral parts of a single process mechanically motivated by the constant supply of water at high pressure. He regarded earlier proposals not only as inadequate but as positively harmful and therefore tried to persuade Normanby to abandon the Building Bill, or at least to postpone it until his own Report was complete [EC to Normanby, 3 February 1841]. Southwood Smith's reputation as the rising star of the sanitary movement was enhanced by his appearance as the chief witness before the Committee. He was the first witness to appear and gave the lengthinest testimony. His report on the prevalence of fever in the metropolice was printed as an appendix to the committee's report. Arnott was among the four other M.D.s to testify, but Chadwick was not invited to appear [B 81]. | |
| 1841 | Poor Law Renewal Bill: Russell was in his fear: unless modified, the Poor Law might cost his Party the elections. He decided to concess to the Commons. Of the Commissioners, Lewis and Lefevre were only too ready for, but Nichollls objected to the concession. The proposed satatute allowed the Commissioners, its authors, no discretion to modify or limit the various exceptional modes of granting relief, merely the liberty either to operate the statute as awhole or suspend it as a whole. Outdoor relief might be granted freely where there was urgent necessity, any sickness, where a funeral was to take place in the applicant's family, where woman was not six months a widow, where a widow had dependent children. Workhouse relief might given to the dependents of a man who was away from home or who resided in another Union (F 188). Chadwick objected against the Bill that [the country where within the last two years has been irritated] is a place where the law has not been introduced at all, where the old fangs remain in the shape of a local act or a Gilbert Act or a vestry clerkship with a large salary attached, or it is a place where only partial relief has been administrated (Objection to Proposed Statute, 7th March 1840, MSS, F 189). He made a document of 24 foolscap pages (Edwin Chadwick to Lord Normanby, 7 March 1840, F 189-190). At the beginning of 1841, Russel made his third attempt to settle the Poor Law question. The new Bill was framed upon the original statute and embodied (according to Chadwick) his suggestion, including the union-of-unions plan. The Bill exposed the Cabinet to the attack by The Times (F 193). (F 188-207) |
| His application for full Commissionership refused and passed over: (F 197-207) Excluded from Poor Law Matter (F 207, 209) | |
| Licence of Bounsel (WR) | |
| Evidence of Employers of Labours on the Influence, Training and Education on the Value of Workmen | |
| [The downfall of the Whigs in September and the Peel government] | |
| 1842 | Sanitary Report published: The report was originally printed with the Commissioners names appended but Geroge Lewis opposed its adoption [L 40; F 212]. Its sale was seven or eight times that of any other Report [F 210]. Key concepts of Sanitary Report: [administration]; [arterial system]; [civil engineering]; [public service] |
| 1844 | On the Best Mode of Representing by Statistics the Duration of Life (JRSS) |
| 1846 | Papers reand before the Statistical Society of Manchester on the demoralization and injuries occasioned by ...labourers engaged in the railways |
| 1847 | Dismissed from Poor Law Commission: In the same year he was appointed to the Royla Commission on London Sanitation and a Metropolitan Commissioner of Sewers. |
| First Vindicating Letter to Sir G.Gray (21 June 1847): | |
| 1848 | Created C.B. and appointed Commissioner on the General Board of Health: Later of the same year appointed Commissioner on the 2nd Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. |
| 1849 | On the Utilization of Sewege as Manure |
| 1855 | On the Sewege of London (JRSA, vol.3) Discussion on paper by J.B.Laws |
| 1856 | Extracts from an Address on Improvements in Machinery and in Manufacturing Process, as affecting the Condition of the Labourer (JRSA, vol.4) Philanthropic Congress at Brussels |
| 1857 | On the Application of the Sewege of Rugby to Agriculture (JRSA, vol.5) Letter. |
| On the Application of the Sewege-irrigation to Cereal Crops (JRSA, vol.5) Letter. | |
| On the Economical, Educational, and Social Inportance of Open and Public Competitive Exam (JRSS vol.21) Paper at Meeting of British Association at Dublin. Also in JRSA vil5 and Trans of BAAS). | |
| On Improvement in Machinery---Races of WOrkmen---Nominally Low-priced Labour (JRSA vol.5) Letter | |
| On Application of Sewege of Towns to Agriculture (JRSA vol.6) | |
| On the Dependence of Moral and Criminal on Physical Conditions of Populations (Trans of BAAS) |