Part 73
It may be of interest to observe that as the whole population grows in age, the annual increase in numbers may be deemed to be equivalent to an annual increase of numbers of the average ages of the community. If they were maintained on the existing average of territory to the population in England, the additional numbers would require an annual extension of one fifty-seventh of the present territory of Great Britain, possessing the average extent of roads, commons, hills, and unproductive land. The extent of new territory required annually would form a county larger than Surrey, or Leicester, or Nottingham, or Hereford, or Cambridge, and nearly as large as Warwick. To feed the annually increased population, supposing it to consume the same proportions of meat that is consumed by the population of Manchester and its vicinity, (a consumption which appears to me to be below the average of the consumption in the metropolis,) the influx of 230,000 of new population will require for their consumption an annual increase of 27,327 head of cattle, 70,319 sheep, 64,715 lambs, and 7894 calves, to raise which an annual increase of upwards of 81,000 acres of good pasture land would be required. Taking the consumption of wheat or bread to be on the scale of a common dietary, _i. e._, 56 oz. daily for a family of a man, woman, and three children, then the annual addition of supply of wheat required will be about 105,000 quarters, requiring 28,058 acres of land, yielding 30 bushels of wheat to an acre; the total amount of good land requisite for raising the chief articles of food will therefore be in all about 109,000 acres of good pasture land annually. If the increase of production obtained by the use of the refuse of Edinburgh (that is, of 3900 oxen from one quarter of the refuse of Edinburgh) be taken as the scale of production obtainable by appropriate measures, the refuse of the metropolis alone that is now thrown away would serve to feed no less than 218,288 oxen annually, which would be equivalent to the produce of double that number of acres of good pasture land.
Footnote 45:
Vide Report.
Footnote 46:
By the statute of 1 and 2 Wm. IV. c. 57, power was given to undertakers to contract for the improvement of land in Ireland, on condition that they should receive a profit which was in no case to exceed 15_l._ per cent. on the outlay. The undertakers, on the consent of two-thirds of the proprietors or of the lessees, were to apply to the Lord-lieutenant for a commission. Individual proprietors or lessees, not exceeding six in number, upon receiving the assent of two-thirds of the proprietors or lessees, might also apply for a commission. To the reason above assigned for the failure, these must be added—that the machinery of the Act is considered complicated; that it nevertheless contained no provisions for ascertaining boundaries, without which in Ireland it would be unsafe to raise any annuity upon the lands; that the mode of repayment, _i. e._, that if the landlords did not within a certain time pay the gross sum assessed, the undertakers were entitled to a redeemable annuity upon the lands drained; but there was no provision to compel the landowners to pay the gross sum, and the annuities might be small and numerous.
Footnote 47:
Except in endeavouring to give more emphatic recommendations as to the importance of making all the paid officers really responsible, I should not vary the representation I had then the honour to make in respect to the means of giving efficiency to local administration. “With respect to the allusion of Mr. Earle, as to the cry of centralization, I conceive that it is a cry to which the few who use it can attach no definite ideas, and it has certainly had little influence except with the most ignorant. The phrase has been used abroad against the destruction of the authority of local administrative bodies, and the substitution of an inefficient and _irresponsible_ agency by the general government. But even abroad, all those who call themselves the friends of popular liberty do not declaim against centralization, but against _irresponsibility_. Here the phrase is used against a measure by which strong local administrative bodies of representatives have been created over the greater part of the country, where nothing deserving the name of systematised local administration has heretofore existed. The central board may be described as an agency necessary for consolidating and preserving the local administration, by communicating to each board the principles deducible from the experience of the whole; and, in cases such as those in which its intervention is now actually sought, acting so as to protect the administration being torn by disputes between members of the same local board; between a part or a minority of the inhabitants and the board, and between one local board and another, and in numerous other cases affording an appeal to a distant and locally disinterested, yet highly responsible authority, which may interpose to prevent the local administrative functions being torn or injured by local dissentions. I feel confident that the more the subject is examined, the more clearly it will be perceived that the great security for the purity and improvement of local administration must depend on a central agency.”
Footnote 48:
The parish doctors in England were often paid only 20_l._ per annum for attendance in parishes of considerable extent. The payments to medical officers who have their private practice are generally quadrupled, as compared with the parish doctors. The medical arrangements in Glasgow will illustrate the frequent state of the existing arrangements in Scotland. The burgh of Glasgow, exclusive of the suburbs, is divided into 12 districts, to each of which a medical practitioner is appointed, who is paid for his services out of the poor’s rates. Dr. Cowan stated of them in his report,—“The duties of the district surgeons are laborious and dangerous. Nearly all of them take fever, which involves a heavy pecuniary loss. Their salary is less than 21_l._ per annum, being less than 1_s._ for the treatment of each case.” For an equivalent district in population under the New Poor Law in England, namely, in Lambeth, there are four out-door medical officers, at salaries of 107_l._ each, and two in-door medical officers, at salaries of 128_l._ each. They have in addition their private practice and fees for vaccination, and special cases. The usual rate of medical allowance to the resident medical officers of dispensaries, who are excluded from private practice, has been from 60_l._ to 70_l._ per annum.
Footnote 49:
After the great fire of London, had the plan of Sir Christopher Wren been adopted for the reconstruction of the City, that circumstance would have saved the great expenses which have lately been incurred in rendering the communications commodious; but no price could now achieve the conveniences and facilities which his plan would have conferred on the inhabitants during the long interval.
Footnote 50:
The Nungate is situated along the edge of the mill-pool.
Footnote 51:
In dry weather the abrasion of the stones is much less.
Footnote 52:
Scotland Yard, Finsbury Circus, and the north side of St. Paul’s Churchyard afford partial illustrations of this arrangement.
Footnote 53:
General Average.
Footnote 54:
Mr. Terry, who is a very extensive farmer in Cookham, and was present during this inquiry, explained this, and, in corroboration of Mr. Whateley’s evidence on this point, stated that he, as a farmer, could not make any profit by growing pigs beyond a certain size. The only advantage which he had from keeping them was in using them to collect the refuse corn, which would otherwise be trodden under foot at the barn-door and rendered unmarketable; the office of the pig was to gather up this refuse, and convert it into a marketable commodity, pork. To fat the pigs beyond a certain size required more than the refuse of the farm-yard; and, therefore, would not pay the farmer. It was therefore, the practice of the farmers to sell the pigs to the millers, who were enabled to fat them on another description of refuse. Now if the labouring man kept a pig, as he had no farm-yard, and no refuse to feed it with, he must either buy the food or steal it. If he were honest and bought the food, his pork would, as Mr. Whateley has stated, cost much more than he could buy it for. A pig could only be kept on the produce of such a piece of land as a labourer could not well cultivate whilst he attended to his other duties. In this state of things, the temptation to pilfer for the support of the pig was considerable. Other witnesses incidentally corroborated this statement, and I found that with many farmers the circumstance of a labouring man having a pig was an objection to giving him employment. The Rev. Mr. Faithful, of Hatfield, Herts, stated, as the result of his observation, that the keeping of pigs was decidedly not profitable to cottagers; and such was the temptation to steal which their possession of pigs created, that he had known a labourer, who had a pig given to him, to steal from the donor the wood to make its sty, the straw to litter it, and the food to feed it. The farmers ridiculed the prevalent statements as to the small cost at which pigs could be kept,—statements commonly made to the gentry by roguish rustics, who profited by these delusions; a pig was not accommodating enough to fatten on less for the cottager than for the farmer.
A friend, who writes from Wiltshire, observes,—“I cannot make out who it is that does fatten pigs to a profit. I asked a brewer the other day if, with his grains, he did not make it answer; and he told me that, on the contrary, he was always out of pocket, and only kept a pig for the pleasure of eating his own pork. ‘Private individuals,’ he added, ‘feed their pigs with what should rather be called spoilt malt than grains. I cannot afford to do that; I must get out all the goodness for my beer, and then there is not sufficient nutriment left to fatten without the addition of things which I must purchase.’ It is not unlikely that many persons, who fancied they kept pigs to a profit, have fed them on this ‘spoilt malt,’ in ignorance that they were, in fact, giving their swine valuable beer instead of refuse grains.”
A gentleman, speaking of such appendages to labourers’ tenements in a manufacturing district, states,—“Formerly most of our houses had them, but they are terrible things for getting out of repair, and we are pulling them down a good deal, and clearing the ground; for I know, from intelligent, clear-headed workmen, that the manufacturing families cannot grow their pork nearly so cheap as they can buy it. The trade in bacon is quite different to what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Now it is a great business, and the quantity of the improved Irish pigs brought even into smallish cottages is very large. In such villages where yard-room is not very large, swill and manure make a terrible stink. Only such of our people keep pigs as have a fondness for it, and as a sort of hobby, but believing that it does not pay.”
Footnote 55:
The plan of Gourlier was simply to divide the receptacle into two parts, an upper compartment and a lower. The contents of the water-closet were discharged into the upper portion, and the water drained into the lower, through holes pierced in the partition. In the barrack plan there was no division in the receptacle, but, instead, a leaden pipe pierced with holes was carried perpendicularly through the midst of it, into which the water filtered from the receptacle, and was conducted anywhere at pleasure. Neither of these systems obviated two principal evils—the necessity to empty the receptacles, and the stagnation of the water, from the night-soil, round the foundations of the houses, from whence it worked its way up into the walls. The annoyance always felt from the removal of night-soil in Paris, and the ineffectual efforts of scientific men, for a long course of years, to discover a remedy, is a sufficient proof of the imperfection of all other methods except sewers. There has never indeed been a question that this last system was incomparably the best. But it has not occurred to men of science at Paris, that there could be any other outlet for the sewers besides the Seine, and the popular apprehension that the water would by this means be polluted, combined with the unwillingness to sacrifice the manure, have been always viewed as fatal objections.—_Translator._
Footnote 56:
The disinfection is produced by mixing the night-soil with calcined mud, or burned turf, or saw-dust, or refuse tan, and various other substances. A commission of the Conseil de Salubrité found that a large barrel of fecal matter was deprived of all smell in five minutes by this process; and even putrefied entrails, the severest test by which it could be tried, yielded equally to its influence. The commission, however, doubted the success of the application where the water was in large proportions.—_Translator._
Footnote 57:
Classes Dangereuses, tom. ii., p. 126.
Footnote 58:
Parent Duchâtelet, de la Prostitution, tom. i. p. 504.
Footnote 59:
Classes Dangereuses, tom. i., p. 135.
Footnote 60:
Even in case of the existence of water companies for the supply of towns, there should still be public springs or wells, which would furnish at least the absolutely necessary quantity of water, free of _all_ expense. In this case, any one who wished to have greater abundance, or wished the water to be introduced into his house, might have it by paying for it.
Footnote 61:
The instances of towns having gained very essentially by drainage are Stuttgard, which has, in consequence, entirely lost a peculiar endemic fever; and Pavia which, by the filling up of the city ditches, has had its average duration of life much raised.
Footnote 62:
Supposing the number to be 1½ daily out of 170, that would give little more than half a week’s sickness yearly to each individual employed. This is a very low average. The sickness found to prevail in ordinary times amongst the labouring population of two parishes in Westminster was at the rate of between 5 and 6 days to each individual. The sickness of the Metropolitan Police is 10½ per annum to each individual. The proportionate mortality of 13 annually out of 550 is 1 to 42, which it will also be perceived, on reference to the standards previously given, is a low proportion of mortality for a manufacturing population.
Footnote 63:
Dr. Currie’s Medical Reports, chap. xxii. Liverpool, 1797.
Footnote 64:
Formerly the mortality on board convict ships amounted to 50 and even 60 per cent. during the voyage; under the more recent arrangements they have amounted only to about 1½ per cent.—E. C.
Footnote 65:
Ten has been the average deaths, taking the last three years.
Footnote 66:
I am of opinion that this Table does not afford sufficient data to warrant general conclusions being deduced from it after the age of 36, as the number of prisoners above that age is too small. In proof of this it may be stated that one person experienced 18 days’ sickness out of the 30 days in the class from 41 to 46, and that another had 18 days’ sickness out of the 36 in the class from 56 to 61, while in the class 76 to 81, one person experienced 3 days, being the whole sickness. J. SMITH.
LONDON:
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For Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Added page numbers for the major headings in the Contents. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 5. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.