Author: Rachel Harvey

Key Question 6. Developments in public health and welfare c.500-present day

Medieval / (Up to 1500ish)	Early Modern / 1500-1800 ish!	Modern / 1800 to the present day
Very smelly towns and cities, no disposal of waste, night soil men removed human waste (poo!) from privies and dumped it into rivers...Shitebrook in Exeter! / Attempts were made by councils to clear waste but often unsuccessful, latrines were often over rivers and likely to flood. / Outbreaks of plague (Black Death) due to rats from 1348, often worst in summer months, between a third and a half of all people in Europe died.	Many outbreaks of plague through 16th/ 17th centuries, eg 1563, 1603, and the Great Plague of 1665 (80,000 dead in London) when attempts were made to clean up streets and ‘kill mice and rats’ (Aberdeen 1647) / Henry VII (1485-1509) passed a law forbidding slaughterhouses from within town and city walls (butchers threw the entrails and muck into already polluted rivers) / Henry VIII passed an act of parliament allowing towns to raise taxes to build sewers (1532) but few places did. / Beginning to make the link between dirt and disease but cities growing fast and impossible to keep clean. / After Great Fire of London 1666, act of parliament passed to rebuild London, widen streets and build with stone and tiles to reduce fire risk, etc, and 1690, an act to pave and clean the streets.	Industrialisation lead to rural to urban migration. Cities increased in size, leading to overcrowded living conditions for the urban poor. / Government attitude of laissez-faire (‘leave it alone’) meaning in early 19th century they didn’t get involved in public health. / Average age of death in Manchester in 1842 was 17. / Outbreaks of cholera from 1831 (52,000 dead in 1848) / Edwin Chadwick: Convinced most people were poor due to poor health not idleness. Report ‘On the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population’ 1842. John Snow proves cholera is in water in 1854. / First Public Health Act 1848: Not compulsory. Councils could build sewers, provide clean water and clear refuse if they wanted to raise tax to do so. 1875 Second Public Health Act forced councils to do this = real breakthrough in PH. New sewers for London from 1858 (Bazalgette) / Individual acts to improve health of workers from rich industrialists like Titus Salt / 20th Century: Boer War identified problem that many volunteers were unfit to serve in the army. Infant Mortality Rate very high. Reports by Charles Booth (1889 London; 35% of people in ‘abject poverty’) and Seebohm Rowntree (1901 York; nearly half the population lived in poverty) / Some improvement after WW1: Homes for Heroes (but only half of promised 500,000 new homes built) Some new council housing for rent but Great Depression slowed this. / Destruction of WW2 meant new homes and slum clearance had to happen (Labour gov 1945-51 built 1 million houses)

20th Century continued!!
Clean Air Act 1956, New Towns like Harlow in 1960s, blocks of flats to clear slums
21st century: Government campaigns about unhealthy lifestyles, fitness drives and healthy eating (obesity epidemic)