Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick

The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewage works that ultimately became the standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great 'condition-of-England' questions of the period, of what rights and expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fitted the political needs of the much-hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Chartism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political, and geographic circumstances of individual towns.

(Cambridge)

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Review of the hardback: 'In this splendid scholarly study, Chris Hamlin offers a major reinterpretation of Edwin Chadwick and the public health movement. The consequences of Chadwick's politics are with us to the present day. This is indispensable reading for anyone interested in health and welfare.' The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

Review of the hardback: 'Hamlin tells us how public health was 'invented' about 150 years ago, with Chadwick as the key actor, and tells it with such pace and excitement that it is hard to put down. Every educated person should read it: certainly all politicians, doctors, every student of public health and all concerned with international development.' London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Review of the hardback: 'Christopher Hamlin is among the best and most incisive innovators in nineteenth century environmental, medical and cultural history. In Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, he has produced a re-evaluation which will become seminal. Even more importantly, Hamlin persuades us radically to rethink and redefine what we mean when we talk about 'public health'.' Bill Luckin, University of London

(Cambridge)

Introduction; 1. Health as Money; 2. A Political Medicine; 3. Prelude to the Sanitary Report, 1833-1838; 4. The Making of the Sanitary Report, 1839-1842; 5. The Sanitary Report; 6. Chadwick's Evidence: The Local Reports; 7. Sanitation Triumphant: The Health of Towns Commission, 1843-1845; 8. The Politics of Public Health, 1841-1848; 9. Selling Sanitation: the Inspectors and the Local Authorities, 1848-1854; 10. Lost in the Pipes; Conclusion; Bibliography.

(Cambridge)