Nuisances and community in mid-Victorian England: the attractions of inspection

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Christopher Hamlin, 'Sanitary policing and the local state, 1873–74: a statistical study of English and Welsh towns', Social History of Medicine, xviii, 1 (2005), 39–61. *The author thanks Tom Crook, Bill Luckin and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin for their excellent suggestions. 2 Per capita the changes are less striking. During Tripe's tenure, Hackney's population more than doubled to 230,000. During the inquiries of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes of 1884–5, Hackney stood out as an exemplary district. See Bill Luckin, '"A Once Rural Community": Society, Environment, and Health in Hackney, 1860–1920' (unpublished Ms); Anthony Wohl, The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (Montreal, 1977), 18. Total nuisance numbers may undercount inspectors' activities. The Hackney reports, for example, did not routinely include nuisance-free dwellings; routine inspections of slaughterhouses are not necessarily included. Also, inspectors there and elsewhere sometimes list contiguous houses on a single street as a single nuisance if they have identical problems and the party responsible is the same. See London Metropolitan Archives [subsequently LMA] 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, 'Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Hackney for 1861', 11; for 1864, 6; for 1865, 14. 3 Anthony Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 194–5. Thus in some cases, where inspections are attributed to medical officers, inspectors are actually doing the inspecting (of structures and bodies). Cf. Martin Daunton, 'Introduction' in Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 111: 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000) [to be cited as CUH III], 1–56, at 8. On strong metropolitan officers see Bill Luckin, 'The metropolitan and the municipal: the politics of health and environment in London, 1860–1920' in Robert Colls and Richard Rodger (eds), Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain, 1800–2000. Essays in Honour of David Reeder (Aldershot, 2004), 46–66. 4 Robert Woods and John Woodward (eds), Urban Disease and Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England (New York, 1984); Frances Bell and Robert Millward, 'Public health expenditures and mortality in England and Wales, 1870–1914', Continuity and Change, xiii, 2 (1998), 221–49; Simon Szreter, 'Rethinking McKeown: the relationship between public health and social change', American Journal of Public Health, XCII (2002), 722–25; James Colgrove, 'The McKeown Thesis: a historical controversy and its enduring influence', ibid., 725–9; Bruce Link and Jo Phelan, 'McKeown and the idea that social conditions are fundamental causes of disease', ibid., 730–32. 5 Edmund Garrett, The Law of Nuisances (London, 1890), 118, 146–7; Bill Luckin, 'Pollution in the city', CUH III, 207–28, at 208–10; Martin Daunton, 'Taxation and representation in the Victorian city' in Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 24–31. 6 For a thoughtful review see Anthony Sutcliffe, 'The growth of public intervention in the British urban environment during the nineteenth century: a structural approach' in James Johnson and Colin G. Pooley (eds), The Structure of Nineteenth-Century Cities (London, 1982), 107–24. 7 LMA 88 (St.M.) Isaac Young, 'Vestry of St Mary Battersea. Report of the Chief Sanitary Inspector. For the Year 1899', Vestry Annual Reports, Appendix 6, 5–7, 14. 8 E. L. Hasluck, Local Government in England (Cambridge, 1936), 38–9. 9 T. Crook, 'Sanitary inspection and the public sphere in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain: a case study in liberal governance', Social History, xxxii, 4 (2007), 369–93. 10 One may argue, following Andrew Abbott, that the pre-professionalized inspectors, with control over the abstraction of 'nuisance', were in fact more professionalized. See Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, 1988), 8–9; also Martin Laffin, Local Government Officers: Professionalism, Power, and Accountability (SSRC/Urban History/Politics Seminar, LSE, 1980). 11 See, for example, V. A. C. Gatrell, 'Crime, authority, and the policeman-state' in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, vol. III: Social Agencies and Institutions (Cambridge, 1990), 243–310; Robert Storch, 'The policeman as domestic missionary: urban discipline and popular culture in northern England, 1850–1880' in R. J. Morris and Richard Rodger (eds), The Victorian City: A Reader in British Urban History, 1820–1914 (London, 1993), 281–306 (original article, 1976); F. M. Dodsworth, 'The idea of police in eighteenth-century England: discipline, reformation, superintendence, c.1780–1800', Journal of the History of Ideas, lxix, 4 (2008), 583–604. 12 'Philosophical issues to do with liberty and constraint were not confined to political tracts. In the business of drains, dirt, and disease they involve political choices and practical limitations on liberty' note Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 6. Using factory acts or poor laws as the model, inspection has been seen to imply surveillance, centralization, discipline and control: see Daunton, 'Introduction', CUH III, op. cit., 14–21. 13 Henry Julian Hunter, 'Report on the Housing of the Poorer Parts of the Population in Towns, Particularly As Regards the Existence of Dangerous Degrees of Overcrowding and the Use of Dwellings Unfit for Human Habitation' in BPP, Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council for 1865, 1866 [3645], XXXIII, Appendix II, 50–194), 169, 178; W. Hamish Fraser and Irene Maver, 'Tackling the problems' in W. Hamish Fraser and Irene Maver (eds), Glasgow, vol. II: 1830–1912 (Manchester, 1996), 394–440, at 413. 14 Concern about pervasive malfeasance was one rationale to professionalize the inspectors. 'A scientific education has a wonderful influence in weaning the mind from anything like corrupt views of professional duty' noted Dr Julian Hunter, John Simon's investigator of housing conditions (and nuisances inspection) in 1865 (Hunter, op. cit., 78). Cf. Joshua Toulmin Smith, Practical Proceedings for the Removal of Nuisances to Health and Safety: and for the Execution of Sewerage Works, in Towns and in Rural Parishes, under the Common Law and Under Recent Statutes, 4th edn (London, 1867), 35, contrasting a tradition 'founded on a trusting faith in the intelligence and honesty of the average of men' with the modern approach 'founded on – at least it can rest on nothing else than – the assumption that all men, except central functionaries, are dishonest, and that none but such functionaries have any intelligence'. Also see Wohl, Eternal Slum, op. cit., 113, 124–7; BPP, Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, 1884–85 [C.4402–I], XXX, Minutes of Evidence, Qs 3290–94, 3364–66, 4232, 4666, 17722, 17767. Presumably, medical officers who testified would have been subject to the same pressures. 15 LMA 74.901 (St M), Tidy, 'Report on Scarlatina', 1872, 45. 16 Crook, op. cit., 391–2, alludes to imputations of bribery. He presents no specific cases. Aside from the Westminster case mentioned below, I have found no imputations of bribery; and only one case of dismissal where the probable cause is unprofessionalism (drunkenness on duty). Many inspectors worked until retirement or death; others moved on to other positions. The American Albert Shaw was struck by the absence of patronage-based appointment; see Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York, 1895), 65. Opportunities for large payoffs will have been less lucrative for inspectors than for surveyors who contracted for large purchases. See John Garrard, 'Scandals: a tentative overview' in James Moore and John Smith (eds), Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950 (Aldershot, 2007), 23–40; also James Moore and John Smith in ibid., 'Corruption and urban governance', 1–19. In a Punch send-up, an inspector conveniently has a contractor friend who can put all to right and fix too the nuisances that will come to be recognized in future ('More happy thoughts', Punch, 9 October 1869, 141). Inspector–contractor relations would certainly warrant further study. 17 'Civil society and British cities' in Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 1–20, at 11; see also Daunton, 'Introduction', CUH III, 24. I explored nuisances inspection in 'public sphere' terms in C. Hamlin, 'Public sphere to public health: the transformation of "nuisance" ' in Steve Sturdy (ed.), Medicine, Health, and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600–2000 (London, 2002), 190–204. 18 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations Translated by Edmund Jephcott With Some Notes and Corrections by the Author, ed. Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell (Oxford, 2000). 19 Bill Luckin, 'The metropolitan and the municipal' in Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 63; Barry Doyle, 'The changing functions of urban government: councillors, officials and pressure groups' in CUH III, 287–313, at 295–8. A remarkable exception is G. C. Clifton, 'The Staff of the Metropolitan Board of Works: 1855–1889: The Development of a Professional Local Government Bureaucracy' (Ph.D., London School of Economics, 1986). 20 Issues of potential source bias need to be acknowledged. My conclusion of significant and responsible activity may rest on the fact that inactive administration will either not have generated records, or they will be less likely to have survived. Thus E. C. Midwinter, focusing on individual Lancashire towns rather than inspectors and their records, paints a less rosy picture in Social Administration in Lancashire: Poor Law, Public Health, and Police (Manchester, 1969), 90–1. 21 Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism in the Modern City (New York, 2003). In recent decades, the balance has changed. At one time municipal leeway signified unmet state responsibility; it has come to signify pragmatic and perhaps even appropriate distribution of responsibility. Thus the 1848–55 General Board of Health, once seen as a tragic vanguard, is more recently viewed as 'a prescriptive and rather bossy central body in an area where central coercion was probably less necessary than the sanitary lobby claimed', according to John Davis, 'Central government and the towns', CUH III, 261–86, at 267. Cf. E. P. Hennock, 'Central/local government relations in England, an outline', Urban History Yearbook (1982), 38–47. I have explored these issues in C. Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain 1800–1854 (Cambridge, 1998) and 'Muddling in Bumbledom: local governments and large sanitary improvements: the cases of four British towns, 1855–1885', Victorian Studies, xxxii, 1 (1988), 55–83. 22 See Hunter, op. cit., 99, 104, 135, 143, 157–8, 194; W. Glen and A. Glen, The Public Health Act, 1875, 9th edn (London, 1878), 176fn; Fraser and Maver, op. cit., 414. 23 Chris Williams, 'The Sheffield Democrats' critique of criminal justice in the 1850s' in Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 96–120, at 106–7. For these issues in Oldham, see Michael Winstanley, 'Preventive policing in Oldham, c.1826–1856', Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, xcvi (1990), 17–35. 24 Mansion House Council on the Dwellings of the Poor, The London Health Laws. A Manual of the Law Affecting the Housing and Sanitary Condition of Londoners With Special Attention to the Dwellings of the Poor (London, 1897), 4, 8. 25 Shaw, op. cit., 81. Shaw presents the chief inspector, Peter Fyfe, as the CEO, with the MOH more a chairman of the board. In many ways Glasgow was both structurally and governmentally unique. See Daunton, 'Introduction', CUH III, 23, 32; Fraser and Maver, op. cit. By 1914, the staff was 400, though it is not clear whether the responsibilities had changed. 26 The sample is more opportunistic than systematic. Wales and Scotland are unrepresented, as are the south of England, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. Port towns are under-represented. We should not expect absence of regional variations; quite the reverse. But I am interested here more in generic issues than comparison. The archival findings are consistent with the 1865 'Survey of inspection in 42 towns' by Henry Julian Hunter for the Privy Council in 1866, op. cit. 27 Space precludes focused attention on two relatively specialized classes of nuisances: industrial (particularly smoke and gas nuisances) and food inspection. Both deserve concerted attention. 28 The inspectors I have studied are all men. Particularly in large places, there are women inspectors by the end of the century. In Glasgow they focused on domestic matters. As Colls and Rodger note, 'Drains and building by-laws were part of a "man's world" ' – 'Civil society and British cities' in Colls and Rodger, op. cit., 15. 29 James Hamilton Muir, Glasgow in 1901 (1901, reprinted Oxford, 2001), 66–7. 30 Bury Archives, ABP/12/2/2, Bury Improvement Commission, Nuisances and Lighting Committee, Minutes, 6 January 1852. 31 Richard Burns, Burn's Justice of the Peace, 29th edn (London, 1845) 7 vols, sv. 'Nuisance, Public', v, 236. Despite absence of any law requiring notification, it remained a nuisance to endanger the public by exposure of a person with smallpox. Cf. Hasluck, op. cit., 278; Herman Finer, English Local Government (London, 1933), 11. 32 Toulmin Smith, op. cit., 5, notes the use by Bacon, 5. For examples of transitional usage see The Coventry Leet Book: or Mayor's Register, containing the records of the Court Leet or View of Frankpledge, A.D. 1420–1555, with other matters, Parts III and IV (reprinted London, 1971): 'ffawtes and noiysoonces as be withyn there office' (III, 609); and 'poiar to enquer of all maner annusauncez…' (IV, xvii–xviii). The term was also related to 'noisome'. See Burns, op. cit.,v, 234. 33 J. R. Spencer, 'Public nuisance – a critical examination', Cambridge Law Journal, xlviii, 1 (1989), 55–84. 34 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, adapted to the present state of the law by Robert Malcolm Kerr, 4 vols. Vol. IV: Of Public Wrongs, 3rd edn (London, 1862), 167–8. 35 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester from the Year 1552 to the Year 1686, and from the Year 1731 to the Year 1846, ed. J. P. Earwaker, 12 vols (Manchester, 1886—), vol. IX (5 October 1820). Cf. Burns, op. cit., 242. 36 For origins see James G. Hanley, 'Parliament, physicians, and nuisances: the demedicalization of nuisance law, 1831–1855', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, lxxx, 4 (2006), 702–32, at 730–2. There was much discussion. Some note that while the law does not require harm to health, it will be best to use presumptive harm to health as a guide. It is likely that availability of a public health mandate for redressing a wide range of grievances helped sustain a broad environmentalist conception of disease aetiology well into the twentieth century. Hasluck, op. cit., 253, noted the ambiguity: 'Public health … [had been] an almost unconscious factor in an amenities campaign; to-day the provision of amenities has become a mere adjunct to a gigantic organization of Public Health'. 37 Unacceptable behaviours may remain unacceptable, but are no longer classified as nuisances. They are apt to come under supervision by general police rather than inspectors of nuisances. See M. J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working-Class Housing 1850–1914 (London, 1983), 267. 38 Hanley, op. cit., notes that the call for summary identification of nuisances came from towns in improvement commission bills, and was by the state A came in the Towns Improvement of a of for in the by many towns Toulmin Smith, op. cit., as or image of an state on local has with in and that in the on local perhaps an in or at least a not See Hamish and social in Morris and Rodger, op. cit., at is Joshua Toulmin Smith, the state and English (2008), For Smith the was law to nuisances. Smith, op. cit., to if not historical On other see and to in eighteenth-century and towns' in Moore and Smith, op. cit., at On see The Local Government System (London, J. and the for law and in England: or Social History, and Social History, (1990), on specialized and municipal officials and see Hasluck, op. cit., Hamlin, 'Public op. Lancashire Records [subsequently Improvement Minutes of the Nuisances Committee, 23 For see Anthony (ed.), Court Leet and Notes 42 Vestry Minutes on Nuisances 16 and 7 was inspecting in not in See ibid., 21 31 October Board of Health they were structures or of is less Many note a of urban government during the of the between the of and improvement acts and the of government with the Public Health of In many towns, of these were of the industrial See Daunton, 'Introduction', CUH III, op. cit., at They were also of in more urban See Daunton, House and op. cit., C. W. The Towns of England: A in the (Montreal, P. J. The of English Towns, (Oxford, 1982), Westminster Archives, St The is also in in see M. C. Health, and Population in the of the (London, On the of and improvement see ibid., and op. also F. Spencer, Municipal An of English Bill to Local With a on Bill (London, E. and M. E. improvement and the English in the and in History, John and and in the (Oxford, Westminster Archives, St 21 On such see Public and the (Oxford, Westminster Archives, St 19 The is that nuisances will be in summary See Gatrell, op. cit., to to is not the to of is use of Mansion House op. cit., Hunter, op. cit., See M. and M. 'The of public health in Urban History, 2 R. Vestry Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, op. cit., with ibid., and St in the LMA 74.901 (St M), Tidy, 'Report on the Sanitary Condition of the of St Mary LMA J. 'Report on the Health of for The of is also and subject to many of the same were responsible for the of a but the state of the of and with the In some cases, as with the in the inspector and were the same but the were as Sanitary 10 issues are in the records of the Manchester Court officers for and Leet Hasluck, op. cit., late the central of Hunter, op. cit., to inspection had been the poor here not their or in the medical that would not Improvement Minutes, Nuisances and Hunter, op. cit., ibid., notes education of in William Sanitary Condition of West of LMA T. Medical LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Sanitary Condition of Hackney, 1864, 6; 1865, LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Sanitary Condition of Hackney, 1864, 6; 1865, For views of these issues and their see Daunton, House and op. cit., The Disease and the of (Oxford, 1993), 'The English in Social Medicine, (Ph.D., University of London, In of towns in of nuisances had medical officers of health – see Hamlin, 'Sanitary op. cit. In is to an in He only to be LMA 76.901 (St Henry Report of the MOH on the of Sanitary The is of a that one is not The of inspectors person See 'Sanitary Medical and 6 Robert to Board of Works, 2 Annual of the MOH for 8. LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report of the Medical Officer for Hackney, LMA 76.901 (St 'Report of the MOH on the of Sanitary ibid., LMA J. Medical See also Sanitary Condition of West for 14. LMA J. Sanitary Report for LMA J. 'Report of the Health of for the LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report for LMA 76.901 (St 'Report of the MOH on the of Sanitary LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report for 1864, Report for was on the of is to be that as many of the and have for been that the of in the future will be but as a large these nuisances from the of and other of the expect the from the cause to remain the LMA Medical Report for op. cit., of of disease rather than about gas be the for LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report of the Medical Officer for Hackney for Report on the Health of West for the Year 'Public health the of in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 'Public health and the the London Medical of Health, in (ed.), Government and and (Oxford, 1988), LMA Local Muir, op. cit., Shaw, op. cit., of 88 ibid., Sanitary Archives Nuisances and Lighting 1 January 20 Sanitary ibid., 9 January LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report for 32; for 1875, Bury Archives, Nuisances and Lighting Minutes, 14 does use to that is public but is not to for medical for the See also Hunter, op. cit., Shaw, op. cit., LMA 'Report of the Health of for the An exception is There a of was with inspectors that See Fraser and Maver, op. cit., John Sanitary October 1866, In an inspector from the of a at … had been by the of a of the Bury Archives, Local Nuisances Minutes, 19 January We should in mind as a large of the from to the in all may use but none has for these the between public and See Richard in CUH III, at Daunton, House and op. cit., be in such Bury Archives, ABP/12/2/2, Bury Improvement Commission, Nuisances Minutes, 3 1852. as the of nuisances inspection in op. cit., ibid., 20 1852. See also and public and in the Social History of Medicine, xviii, 2 (2005), the American Shaw, English towns had recognized that urban He as the to environment the use of the of the a or of society has a more to the and endanger the health and of than in the many of the of municipal government – the as – are but the to conditions of the of the cit., and from to 2 January Hunter, op. cit., on Bury Archives, Local Nuisances Minutes, 23 For their for professional see Archives were the was London LMA 76.901 (Hac), Tripe, Annual Report for in of requiring general nuisances Local Local Board See also use of in Great and General 5 1 The be of and public health in England, Social and Medicine, 1 (1988), Hasluck, op. cit., Finer, op. cit., Joyce, can call these of one as well call of Hunter, op. cit., as inspectors moved into the of social may be seen as an See Daunton, House and op. cit., Sanitary and criminal policing may be seen to in a See A. P. and the a of in the Age of in A. P. (ed.), Social in Britain (London, 1977), Mary a Social British (Chicago, of in (New York, Hasluck, op. cit., have a of and in local government See Daunton, 'Introduction', CUH III, op. cit., On the culture of see Hasluck, op. cit.,

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