Edwin Chadwick

A disciple of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he was most active between 1832 and 1854; after that he held minor positions, and his views were largely ignored.

Edwin Chadwick was born on 24 January 1800 at Longsight, Manchester, Lancashire[1] His mother, Teresa,[2] died when he was still a young child, yet to be named.

His father, James Chadwick, tutored the scientist John Dalton in music and botany[3] and was considered to be an advanced liberal politician, thus exposing young Edwin to political and social ideas.

When his family moved to London in 1810, Chadwick continued his education with the help of private tutors, his father and a great deal of self-teaching.

[15] He employed John Roe, the surveyor for the district of Holborn and Finsbury who had invented the egg-shaped sewer, to conduct experiments on the most efficient ways to construct drains, the results of which were incorporated into the report, and the summary included eight points, including the absolute necessity of better water supplies and of a drainage system to remove waste, as ways to diminish premature mortality.

[17] The report caught the public imagination, and the government had to set up a Royal Commission on the Health of Towns to consider the issues and recommend legislation.

Each house would have a constant water supply, and water-closets would ensure that soil was discharged into egg-shaped sewers, to be carried away and spread on the land as manure, preventing rivers from becoming polluted.

[23] Chadwick wanted to see his ideas implemented over a wide area, and set about forming a company to supply water to towns, to ensure their drainage and cleansing, and to use the refuse for agricultural production.

It was to have the grandiose title "The British, Colonial and Foreign Drainage, Water Supply and Towns Improvement Company", with an initial capital of £1 million, but it was the time of the Railway Mania, and he struggled to raise the finance against such competition.

This led to a rift forming between him and Hawksley, who had initially worked closely with him but who later took on water supply projects which did not include any requirement for drainage.

Chadwick chose all of the inspectors himself, ensuring that they shared his views on glazed sewer pipes, constant water supply and arterial drainage.

By 1853, they had received requests for inspections from 284 towns, and 13 combined water supply, sewerage and drainage schemes had been completed under the legislation.

[30] Opposition from engineers increased, and a "Private Enterprise Society" was formed by Hawksley and James Simpson, with the intent of bringing down the Board.

Chadwick lived to see his position vindicated when the Local Government Board was established in 1871, which led to the formation of the Ministry of Health.

[31] In 1851, Chadwick made a recommendation that a single authority should take over the nine separate water supply companies that operated in London.

[36][7] In January 1884, he was appointed as the first president of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors, now the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

These included tropical hygiene, criminal justice institutions, policy regarding funerals and burials in urban areas, school architecture, utilisation of sewage, military sanitation and the education of paupers.

One such was his successor as head of the Board of Health, Sir Benjamin Hall, later Lord Llanover, an advocate of decentralisation through the strengthening of municipalities.

Another critic was the representative of national government, Lord Seymour, later the Duke of Somerset, under whom as First Commissioner of Works from 1851-1852 the Board nominally fell.

[40][41][42] In July 1858, in a piece covering the a programme of government to clean up the River Thames through provision of funds for that purpose to the Metropolitan Board of Works, a body set up by Sir Benjamin Hall during his own tenure as First Commissioner of Works (1855-1858), The Holborn Journal describes Chadwick as the influence behind "that sharp, persevering set of centralising meddlers".

Sir Edwin Chadwick
Attached to 5 Kingfisher Close, Longsight and viewed from Stockport Road
Sir Edwin Chadwick
Chadwick's 1838 Bethnal Green parish map showing mortality from four diseases
Chadwick's name as it appears on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Chadwick's name as it appears on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine