Edwin Chadwick

Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890) was the principal architect of the Sanitary Reform movement in Britain in the nineteenth century; his influence on the philosophy of public health and its translation into legislation was profound. Born near Manchester to a family of Wesleyan landowners, Chadwick was raised in London and trained in law. His father, James, had edited a radical journal, the Spectator. Following the appearance of some of his own writings in the Westminster Review, Edwin came to the attention of two of the leading philosophers and social theorists of the early eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Chadwick served as Bentham's literary secretary from 1830 until the latter's death in 1832, the year in which Chadwick was appointed to the new Poor Law Commission. In that role, his industry in investigating the conditions under which the poor lived, as well as his "knowledge of law,… infinite capacity for taking pains over details, and his skill in marshalling the facts" (Marston 1925, p. 23) led him to exert a steadily greater influence on British public policy in a variety of areas relating to public health.

His advocacy led to the 1836 act that established a registry for births and deaths, and to the 1848 Public Health Act establishing a central board of health. He also influenced legislation on factories, child labor, and water supplies. He served as secretary to the Poor Law Board, and as a member of the first board of health (1848–1852). His sanitary philosophy, most fully explicated in his Enquiryinto the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842) viewed the improvement of drainage, housing, and water supply as an essential national economic good, as it prevented the early deaths of working men. Often uncompromising in his belief in the value of government intervention to remedy unsanitary conditions, he was frequently opposed by his business interests, and held no public office after 1852. He did, however, spend the rest of his long life advocating quietly for "The Sanitary Idea," and was knighted by Queen Victoria in the ninetieth and final year of his life.

(SEE ALSO: Filth Diseases; History of Public Health; Poverty and Health; Sanitation)

Bibliography

Jones, D. (1931). Edwin Chadwick and the Early Public Health Movement in England, Vol. 9: University of Iowa Studies in the Social Sciences. Iowa City: University of Iowa.

Marston, M. (1925). Sir Edwin Chadwick. London: Leonard Parson.

— NIGEL PANETH

The English utilitarian reformer Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890) sponsored legislation in the areas of public health, factory reform, and poverty relief. He was one of the founders of the modern British administrative state.

Edwin Chadwick was born at Longsight, Lancashire, on Jan. 24, 1800. Largely self-educated, he entered an attorney's office and was called to the bar. He was also a journalist and was influenced by the writings of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of English utilitarianism. Bentham in turn admired Chadwick's articles (especially those on preventive police) and took him on as his assistant.

When Bentham died in 1832, Chadwick carried on his work through membership on several royal commissions. Chadwick and the political economist Nassau Senior drafted the Poor Law Commission's report which led to the adoption of the New Poor Law of 1834. This legislation, however, was bureaucratic and harsh. It was popular with the propertied classes because poor rates dropped, but it was unpopular with the working classes since relief was not easily available.

Chadwick was also in the forefront of the movement to improve conditions of public health. He worked closely with Southwood Smith in publishing a series of reports which pointed up unsanitary conditions. In his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842) Chadwick compiled a grim record of slum housing, unclean water, and undrained streets, all of which he concluded formed the basis of crime, disease, and immorality. The Public Health Act of 1848, passed by Parliament in the wake of a threat of a cholera epidemic, fell far short of Chadwick's proposals, but a board of health was created which Chadwick headed from 1848 to 1854. Factory reform also attracted the attention of Chadwick and the Benthamite reformers. The acts of 1833 and 1847 were to a great extent a result of their work.

Chadwick was the most famous British civil servant of his time and the chief proponent of government intervention in the solution of social problems. His obsession with organization, centralization, and efficiency led a critic to charge that Chadwick planned to abolish the counties and cut up the map of England into "Benthamite rectangles." Local objections to government interference led to Chadwick's dismissal from the board of health in 1854. Although he never again held a government post, he continued to testify before royal commissions and, like Bentham before him, continued to draw up reform plans and programs until his death in 1890. He was knighted in 1889. Chadwick was a tactless man, but his passion for administrative efficiency brought the national state to a position of social responsibility.

Further Reading

The major study dealing with Chadwick and the social reforms he was associated with is Samuel Edward Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952). Richard Albert Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement, 1832-1854 (1952), concentrates on one of these reforms.

Additional Sources

Brundage, Anthony, England's "Prussian minister": Edwin Chadwick and the politics of government growth, 1832-1854, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988.

Chadwick, Edwin (1800-90). Reformer. John Stuart Mill called Chadwick ‘one of the organising and contriving minds of the age’. He was born in Manchester and became a lawyer. In 1832 he was appointed to the Poor Law Commission and the following year to the commission on children in factories. His influence on both reports was great and he was appointed secretary to the Poor Law Commission in 1834, a post which brought him savage criticism. Another of his abiding interests was sanitary reform and from 1848 to 1854 he served as a commissioner on the new Board of Health. He was then rather pointedly pensioned off and his public career closed. He was hard-working and determined, but also tactless, unhumorous, impatient, dogmatic, and over-confident.

Sir Edwin Chadwick.

Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB (24 January 1800 – 6 July 1890) was an English social reformer, noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and improve sanitary conditions and public health. One of the reasons why Chadwick believed in improvement to public health was because he believed it would save money. He was born in Longsight, Manchester. Called to the bar without any independent means, he sought to support himself by literary work such as his work on Applied Science and its place in Democracy, and his essays in the Westminster Review (mainly on different methods of applying scientific knowledge to the practice of government) brought him to the notice of Jeremy Bentham, who engaged him as a literary assistant and left him a large legacy.

In 1832 Chadwick was employed by the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the operation of the Poor Laws, and in 1833 he was made a full member of that body. Chadwick and Nassau William Senior drafted the famous report of 1834 recommending the reform of the old Poor Law. Under the 1834 system individual parishes were formed into Poor Law Unions – each Poor Law Union was to have a union workhouse. Chadwick favoured a more centralised system of administration than that which was adopted, and he felt the Poor Law reform of 1834 should have provided for the management of poor law relief by salaried officers controlled from a central board, the boards of guardians acting merely as inspectors.

In 1834 he was appointed secretary to the Poor Law commissioners. Unwilling to administer an act of which he was largely the author in any way other than the way he thought best, he found it hard to get along with his superiors. This disagreement, among others, contributed to the dissolution of the Poor Law Commission in 1847. Chadwick's chief contribution to political controversy was his belief in entrusting certain departments of local affairs to trained and selected experts, instead of to representatives elected on the principle of local self-government.

While still officially working with the Poor Law, Chadwick took up the question of sanitation in conjunction with Dr Thomas Southwood Smith. Their joint efforts produced a salutary improvement in the public health. His report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population(1842),^[1] was researched and published at his own expense. A supplementary report was also published in 1843,^[2] Chadwick's efforts were acknowledged by at least one health reformers of the day. William James Erasmus Wilson dedicated his 1854 book Healthy Skin to Chadwick "In admiration of his strenuous and indefatigable labors in the cause of Sanitary Reform".^[3]

Chadwick was a commissioner of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers in London from 1848 to 1849; he was also a commissioner of the General Board of Health from its establishment in 1848 to its abolition in 1854, when he retired on a pension, and occupied the remainder of his life in voluntary contributions to sanitary, health and economical questions. In January 1884 he was appointed as the first president of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors (now the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health).

In recognition of his public service Chadwick was knighted in 1889. He served in his post until his death in 1890 at East Sheen in Surrey.

Bibliography

• Edwin Chadwick, Nineteenth-century Social Reform, ed. David Gladstone, Routledge (1997) ISBN 0415168716

• Edwin Chadwick, The Evils of Disunity in Central and Local Administration ... and the New Centralisation for the People, London, Longmans, Green and Co. (1885)

• B. W. Richardson, The Health of Nations, a Review of the Works of Edwin Chadwick, with a Biographical Introduction, London, Longmans, Green and Co. (1887); Kessinger (2007) ISBN 0548215626.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

References

1. ^ Chadwick, Edwin (1842). "Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions". excerpt from Report...from the Poor Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (pp.369-372) (online source). added by Laura Del Col: to The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/chadwick2.html. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
2. ^ Chadwick, Edwin (1843). Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain. A Supplementary Report on the results of a Special Inquiry into The Practice of Internment in Towns. London: Printed by R. Clowes & Sons, for Her Majesty's Stationery Office. http://www.archive.org/details/reportonsanitary00chaduoft. Retrieved 2009-11-08.  Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
3. ^ Wilson, Erasmus (1854). Healthy Skin: A Popular Teatise on the Skin and Hair, their Preservation and Management (2nd American, from the 4th Revised London ed.). Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea. http://www.archive.org/details/healthyskinapop04wilsgoog. Retrieved 2009-11-08.  Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)

External links

• Marjie Bloy, "Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890)", The Victorian Web
• Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
• Archival material relating to Edwin Chadwick listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Sir Edwin Chadwick (Obituary) in "Eminent persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times, Vol IV, 1887-1890", Macmillan & Co., 1893, pp. 244-250, http://books.google.com/books?id=PxIYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA244 Sir Edwin Chadwick (Obituary) in 
• Edwin Chadwick at Find a Grave

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