Review of 'Death and Survival in Urban Britain: Disease, Pollution and Environment 1800-1950'

Death and Survival is a collection of eight previously published articles and chapters with a new preface, introduction and conclusion. Luckin is without a doubt one of the most important urban environmental historians of London. His career evolved from a focus on the social history of medicine to an overlapping interest in urban environments, disease, infrastructure and environmental discourse. He provides a crucial bridge between environmental historians and the rich history of British urban public health. So it is not at all surprising that this is a strong collection of essays. They are not, however, updated, meaning some of the scholarship is more than three decades old. This leads to the question as to whether the book adds enough value when readers can find copies of the majority of the material. Three of the chapters were published in journals and should be relatively easy to track down, but my good-sized Canadian research library only has two of the three on hand. Five chapters appeared in edited collections, ranging from the ubiquitous volume three of The Cambridge Urban History of Britain to a more obscure book held in only a handful of major North American research libraries. Readers in London might be able to find, print or photocopy all eight chapters in an afternoon at the British Library, but those of us without easy access to a top research library will find the convince of book appealing. Secondly, the introduction and conclusion are generally excellent. The first situates 30 years of scholarship within historiographical developments in the social history of medicine, environmental history and urban history. The second is a succinct 18-page overview of the history of disease and death in the urban setting from 1800 to 1950, broken into three sections: 1800-1860, 1860-1900 and 1900-1950. This, read alongside similar overviews from Simon Szreter and Anne Hardy, provides a very good primer on our broad understanding of urban public health during this time period.(1) Luckin is very good at synthesis. The endnotes in both of these chapters are an excellent starting point for graduate students interested in the overlapping histories of urban public health and environments.

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