The Growth of
Towns and Public Health Problems
KSHS YEAR 9
ASSESSMENT: PUBLIC HEALTH
Your task is to answer
this question:
How important a part did Joseph Bazalgette play
in the improvement of public health in 19th century British towns?
You’ll be writing this essay in class (or at
home, depending on your teacher), having planned it in advance. You need to start your essay with an Introduction,
briefly explaining why Bazalgette is important but
also why other individuals and factors are important too. Your essay should
then explain what the problems with
living conditions were in 19th century towns were, and how far what Bazalgette did went to improve
those conditions. You should then discuss the contribution of other individuals and organizations
(e.g. Chadwick and the government) to public health discussing whether you
think they were as important, more important or less
important than Bazalgette. Finally, sum up your
argument in a conclusion that
directly addresses and answers the question with your point of view. Your
conclusion should refer back to the evidence you have cited in your essay.
Essay-writing is an extremely important skill and is needed for a wide range of
subjects at GCSE and A-Level.
You research and
plan this essay yourself, using class notes and the textbook Expansion,
Trade, and Industry (by C. Culpin), and on the
Internet during your next few homeworks.
Here are some
web pages that will help you with your research in this subject:
TIPS
1.
Access KSHS Academic Portal at: KSHS
Website
Log-in,
go to the Classroom, History Department
Online, Mr de la B Year 9 History, 19th
century Public Health Project and all the documents and Powerpoints
are in there including the question sheet and mark scheme and textbook pages!
2. General background Victorian Times Project and see
especially the this
page on Health
3. Books: start with the textbook Expansion, Trade and Industry in M6.
Copies of the relevant pages are on the KSHS KSHS
Academic Portal - Home (see above for directions).
TOWNS AND DISEASE
Town government had to be reformed and
this began with the Municipal
Corporations Act of
1835 – Government helped to start Improving
Towns.
Try this Site to look up different towns or individuals. To find out about
what happened in
The problems of growing towns became a
subject of government concern when a new disease called cholera struck
Take a look at this site to see what
happened in one port: Dundee’s
cholera
This page shows the impact of cholera in
Sleaford: go to the Academic portal (instructions above) to
read a page about Sleaford’s health problems and what
was done to solve them.
EDWIN CHADWICK
A very important individual was Edwin Chadwick. He researched into living conditions and worked to
achieve government Public Health Acts, and produced what’s now known as the
Chadwick Report (have a look at the impact of the Report on Public
Health in Victorian Wolverhampton). Improvements
followed, driven by new laws such as the Public Health Act
of 1848 (see also more
on the Act here), spurred on by another cholera outbreak. Instrumental in
these was the invention of the toilet, supposedly invented by one Thomas Crapper.
JOHN SNOW
John Snow
played a very important part with
his pioneering study of how cholera
was transmitted.
JOSEPH BAZALGETTE
Joseph
Bazalgette was one of the most influential people involved, thanks to his work on
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
Joseph Chamberlain
was Mayor of Birmingham during part of his political career. As a ‘city father’
he played a very important role in improving
It’s not all about men. Florence was an
important contributor to the improvement of public health. There is more
information about her here.
NOVELISTS
You might find this page interesting: Charles
Dickens' London – look on here for the novelist Charles Kingsley’s 1849
account of the cholera district of Bermondsey in
Then there’s Charles Dickens himself. This
is how he described a cholera-infested slum in his novel Bleak House (published in 1853). Men like Dickens had a great
influence on the move to improve public health:
“Jo lives - that
is to say, Jo has not yet died - in a ruinous place, known to the like of him
by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is a black,
dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were
seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who,
after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings.
'Now, these tumbling
tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch,
vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul
existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself
to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes,
fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint than
Lord Coddle, and Sir Thomas Doddle, and the Duke of Foddle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoddle, shall set right in 500 years - though born
expressly to do it.”
SCIENTISTS
Part of the improvement was brought about
by scientists who began to understand how disease worked, such as John Snow, Koch and Louis Pasteur
GOVERNMENT
Remember that Government played a major
role in public health, but that
See the Public Health Act
of 1848 and see also Artisan's
and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875. The
latter was all about improving the standard of housing.
And also this page again: Joseph
Bazalgette