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Leader (1850-1860), 24th September 1853, Edition Town of 2, Page 925

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      ORGANIZATIONS AGAINST THE CHOLERA . The cholera lias found us unprepared . Were this the first time that the cholera came to England , there would be an excuse for the absence of all obstacles to its operations . But this is not the first time . It has visited us again and again . The memory of its doings , on the last occasion , is fresh and sore in the minds of many persons , and it seems but a year ago since Edwin Chadwick and Southwood Smith were pointing out to us what should be done , that we might avoid its dangers and avert its fatality . But , in many places , nothing has been done to ward off its deadly blows . The new visit has necessitated

      new exhortations , the sameness of which would wearv us , but that we know that they are really essential . In the narrow streets of London filth is still the prevailing presence ; noxious heaps of dirt are still to be found , by smell and sight , in places where men spend often twelve , and sometimes sixteen , out of the twenty-four hours . Want of air is still the stifling fact , in thousands of lodging-houses , where poor people pass a great deal of their time . Factories , which send out poisons for home consumption , still rear their chimnies in the midst of seething crowds . And the commonest conveniences of healthy habitation are absent from houses , occupied even by people who are above the lower classes , in station and

      comparative independence . This description applies to London and to many towns of England , especially the great trading and commercial cities of the North . Newcastle is first in filth , and has won the disgrace of being the first in which the cholera has appeared . Liverpool has holes and corners where disease is industriously encouraged . South Shields has suffered for its own sins and for its nearness to Newcastle . The low lanes of Manchester will soon tell their own

      deadly tale ; already one death , very sudden , has occurred . Still the great power of doing nothing is strong in local" bodies . This very week the vestry of St . Mary ' s , Newington , in this metropolis , had a long and loud debate as to the virtues of public baths , and finally adjourned , without a decision . The local boards in Deptford have to be roundly reminded of their duties , by the dockyard officials , who point to many a street where cholera may properly lodge . In Sheerness there is the same story . In other places we hear of great activity , and we do not doubt that personal fear has hurried many into proper precautions . But , upon all the acts of local officialism

      we see the stamp of precipitation and confusion . Their machinery is the mushroom growth of fear . The actual danger staring them in the face has alone roused their attention . And the great fact stili remains ; we are unprepared for the cholera . We knew that it might come : we knew that the dwellers in dirty places were almost sure to bo attacked : we knew that even good diet and ventilated houses could not keep it out , when once aided by the treacherous ally within our walls : we knew that daily in our streets persona spreading tho seeds of cholera would come near and almost come in contact with the wealthiest and

      most cautious ; yet , as a peoplo , we are still unprepared . It is a national disgrace , more shameful to us , as a civilized community , than if a foreign army landed on our coasts , and killed thousands before our troops moved . Tho popular knowledge of tho character of cholera , and the means to meet it , fully justify this rebuke . Tho real facts of tho case mako tho

      necessity of prevention and oarly action still more imperative . Tho surgeon may try to find out ; the diet of the family ; tho minutiuo almost bafllo his inquiry ; but in tho public markets the character , wholesome or unwholesome , of tho food of a district could be ascertained by an investigation more easily than tho after inspection of tho dinners of a Nmglc family . Inspectors find houses rank with foul air ; two years before when these houses Were being built , without yard or water-closet , n "J person conld have prophesied that they would

      he homely hospitals for tho needy families confined in thorn . An offensive drain is detected by <\ doctor ; any engineer could have- said from tho hi'Hi ; | Jin (; | , | 10 drain would not work' woll , and would end in doing harm . A whole- district is mado unhealthy by tho fumes of a factory , but that i ( , h furnos would bo noxious ovory chemist iu town eon Id lmvo told tho pooplo and tho authorises before a stono of tho building was laid . Some M P «« ial facts communicated to us by a friend nioro strikingly show tho oarly stage at which ovll JH gonowttQil , Jn » ftiphionablo outlet of JJQn ,

      don new houses , stately in pillars and gay in white exteriors , have been reared very rapidly of late . Our friend knows the neighbourhood very well . Before the new houses were planned he knew one field adjoining the public road ; it was a reposi-r tory for rubbish , decaying animal matter , nightsoil , and refuse of all kinds . It was a place that no person could pass without being sensible of the abomination . On that ground , the offensive mass surface hardened into passable solidity , the foundations of family mansions and comfortable dwelling houses were carefully laid ,

      and built up with due regard to proper solidity , airiness , and convenience . Our friend is a medical man ; a family of his acquaintance took one of the houses ; he has not been out of it for three weeks together during the last six months , the term of their occupancy . One after another , three of the family have been taken ill . The cause is clear ; the matter beneath the house might , if hermetically sealed up , be innoxious , it might " keep ; " but when rain and air creep into it , little by little , through chinks and crannies , when a simmering ferment is thus occasionally aroused ,

      —through every crevice of the floor an invisible evil steals up , and slowly poisons the people of the house . But they cannot understand it ; they say that there is no bad smell , that the house is kept quite clean , and the housemaid , closely questioned , admits nothing , but that every morning when she comes down stairs , she feels forced to open all the windows , so heavy is the atmosphere in the lower rooms . Another house in this locality was built on a bank of earth specially raised for the foundation : in levelling the earth some of the labourers found human bones—the

      earth had come from a city graveyard . The story of the inmates of this house is unknown to us—it may be guessed . These things are not alone ; there is scarcely a ^ part of London but has haunted houses—dwellings where death is a permanent lodger . In Berners-street , Oxford-street , there is a row of houses which for years has been successively fatal to a large proportion of the inmates . They are built over one of the old plague graveyards . In all these cases we see causes at work , primal causes which precede architecture , and which defy the most minute inspection of inspectors coming when the fatality occurs . These agents of the cholera are accessories before the fact .

      And yet none of our organizations , municipal or Governmental , provide for tho prevention of such gigantic causes of disease . We read the reports of the Registrar-General , and we find accurate and clear accounts of the sanitary condition of the houses where death has occurred ; but no notice of the many houses in their district where death is likely to occur through bad conditions of habitation , and dangerous nearness of nuisance . This is not tho fault of the local registrarsgenerally most painstaking persons , —for they are appointed to register deaths , not to prevent them . But we seo no other adequate organization for the removal of nuisances . Tho duties

      are divided among many persons ; and in some of tho most important places what is divided among many is performed by none . In Rosemary-lane , and many other localities of the city wards , tho public dust-bins have been left uncleared up to this very week of actual cholera in tho town . This is but one instance out of many . Every one can tell a nuisance when he sees or smells it . But who can tell vis , in a few short words , what is to bo done towards a remedy P There is no short or simple

      action of forcible ejectment , and no prompt means of punishing the offenders against public health . There is no law or police to stop tho building of bad houses . There is no local agency to delect peoplo in laying tho foundations of accidents . A man may talco measures for undermining a bouse , and unless ho sends for a surveyor to witness his oflenco ho may go on unhindered until tho house- falls . ( Guy FawlccB would delight in-theso days : it would

      suit him exactly had tho officers wiitod until ho gave thorn notice , or until a summons could bo irifliiod against him . ) An engineer may sink a noisome drain under tho very none of tho public ; but until the drain has done soino deadly work , no one stops him . The one character attaches to tho conduct of all our authorities ; they aro inactive ) at first , and very energetic when , an a gononil rulo , it is too hito . It is alno very painful to noto , that Homo of our highest oJHoiiil authorities do not know how to guido tho peoplo .

      The directions and regulations issued by the General Board of Health may be understood by lawyers , and acted on by clerks ; but for the general public , they require to be translated into that popular English which the people understand . It is a relief to except'from this catalogue of sins and shortcomings , the closing of the London graveyards , and the constant labouring within his vocation of the Jiegistrar-General , whose weekly warning we cannot but remember now with this expression of good will .

      But what officialism has left undone , and what it has done , remind us the more forcibly of the great task it has yet to accomplish . It must first know its own strength and its own situation . The civil service of England is a most extensive institution . It has in it men of acute intelligence , great business energy , fine capabilities of conception , and ready ability to act . Its career has been in bureaux , and the people know little of the actual administrators of our State affairs .

      Men whose minds supply politicians with knowledge and reasoning are as unknown to the people as if they were mandarins in China . These men have to fight a continuous fight with political intrigue . In the Stafford story we saw how shamelessl y Parliamentary men thwart officials " regarding onl y what was good for the service . " To enable them to succeed against this strong and subtle power of political party the bureaucrats must appeal to the people . Already they feel more with the people than with the political chiefs , for in a free state the civil service is the people ' s right hand , and not the servant of the sovereign . Sir Charles Trevelyan , for instance ,

      spoke like a popular orator before the Lords when he gave evidence in favour of a free press , native employment , and beneficial rule in India . The civil service has to place itself en rapport with the people , and inspirit and inform them into organized action . Above all things it must teach them what to do ; instead of shutting up its large knowledge i : \ big blue books , and wrapping up information in the mummy cloths of official words , it must speak plainly to the people . If vestries are obstructive , guardians inert , and the general public good for nothing in concert , tho fault is with officialism , which hitherto has not known how to win their

      confidence , or show them how to act . With this prosent danger to clear the way , the civil service has now the noblest task ever set for a class of men

      — to teach a free people the necessity of organized action and the way to work together for good .

      Untitled Article

      RATIONALE OF INN CHEAPNESS . "You English people , " said an eminent French writer to us once , " think a great deal of ' comfort , ' and yet I don't know a country in the world where it is more impossible , in some respects , to be made comfortable . " Many of us are doomed , at some periods of our life , to find our warmest welcome at an inn , and yet wo so arrange matters as to preclude ourselves from obtaining comfort in that traveller ' s home , excepting upon such terms as totally destroy the

      comfort wo would purchase . If the wino does not fort wo would purchase . If the wino does nof mako tho traveller ' s stomach ache , the bill does ; if the hardness of the bed does not keep him awake , tho price of . tho " wax-lights" prevents his sleeping . This torment is the greater because he cannot know what ho shall have to pay . Even in inns that have a tariff , thore must , in many instances , bo great firmness , if ho escapes on tho stipulated charges . . 11 o cannot get what ho wants unless it bo accompanied by what be wants not , and ho is charged most for those things which ho prizes least . Say that ho is

      either disinclined for wino or very picksoino m his tasto , yet he must " drink for the good of tho house , " or undergo some slight which ru / Hos his dignity . He desires a clean and private room , and in ' quite willing to pay for that ; but he is to pay for " lights , " which he does not require , and , indeed , which be does not have , for who ever found wax lights at an inn where they

      appeared in the bill r ' There are , however , reasons for all things , and there are many and obvious reasons why the Englishman is ho thwarted in Jiin inn bills . Just at present tho Times in deluged with evory species of complaint , from people who consent to be fleooed , in every quarter of the country , and yet wo Jiavo no improvement . The reason is , that tho . Englishman < loo « not d

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      September 24 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , 925

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 24, 1853, page 925, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2005/page/13/