England Public Health Records - International Institute

Public Health
In pre-Restoration times our ancestors were not too bothered by sanitation (Razzell) and the earthen floors were used in the absence of toilets until the 18th century. Brick flooring was introduced in the late 17th century and became very popular, since which time the English had a reputation for domestic cleanliness. The relationship of this to mortality rates is discussed by Razzell.

Taking the waters by drinking or bathing at curative spas having sulphur or chalybeate springs came from the continent as early as 1560 but was at its height of popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most fashionable centres were Bath and Wells in the west country and Epsom and Tunbridge Wells south of London. There were many others, and your ancestors could have visited them from time to time, perhaps accounting for some of those inexplicable census absences. The Prince Regent, later George IV, popularised the restorative effects of sea air and bathing at Brighton in the early 19th century.

State Intervention for Good Health
There was large-scale state intervention to promote good health during the 19th and 20th centuries. The first national public health board was convened in 1805-1806 regarding a fever then present in Spain and Gibraltar. In 1831-1832 there was another concerning the cholera outbreak in Britain. Chadwick’s 1842 Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Poor resulted in a Royal Commission on the Health of Towns which reported in 1844-1845. As a result of their deliberations the Public Health Act was passed in 1848 which encouraged Local Boards of Health (MOH) to be established to survey and address their local needs. Smith quotes an example from these surveys:

Chart: Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Poor Example from Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire—1852

Several other acts of parliament followed and by 1870 there were 700 authorities working under public health and government legislation, and these were not co-ordinated with the poor law and registration authorities. Outside the major towns parish vestries, boards of guardians, highway boards and others were all involved in public health matters. To simplify all this two Public Health Acts of 1872 and 1874 established rural and urban sanitary authorities with the compulsory advice of a Medical Officer of Health. This explains the puzzling acronyms USD (Urban Sanitary District) andRSD (Rural Sanitary District) on registration certificates. In 1888 the new county councils appointed the MOH’s and in 1894 urban and rural district councils became the administrators.

Surveys
Several public health surveys were made between 1885 and 1895, the returns and correspondence being at The National Archives. TNA has records of the resulting acts and regulations and some local records survive in county archives, but they are unlikely to contain information about individuals. Further information on public health in 19th century Britain can be found in TNA document D73. Of more direct use to the family historian are the Charles Booth surveys of poverty in London carried out from 1886 until around 1902. This massive 17-volume work contains street-by-street accounts of living and working conditions, and major occupations of those in each street. A series of colour-coded maps accompanies the text to indicate the poverty levels as follows: black indicates extreme poverty, various shades of blue are slightly better-off, then rising through purple to the comfortable pink, the relatively affluent red, and top-of-the-scale affluent yellow.

Booth’s most detailed accounts are of the east end and central London, and Battersea south of the river, which are in volume 1. It is important to know that Booth used pseudonyms for both streets and people in this volume, however in volume 2 he gives a key to the real street names. The exact date of each walk he did with the police officers is noted, and you can get information about individuals if you have an exact address and use the Booth notebooks in conjunction with the census returns. The rest of metropolitan London is covered in further volumes but in a less detailed manner, and with more emphasis on poor rather than affluent neighbourhoods. Several volumes are devoted to the conditions of work in different trades, which give descriptive material relevant to any ancestor in that trade.

The original published edition is hard to find, but Steele has collected the information on south east London districts in book format, and this is reviewed in Family History News and Digest volume 13 #2, page 91. Scott has a pair of excellent articles in Family Tree Magazine, published before the LSE (London School of Economics) digitised and indexed the notebooks and they can be found at Charles Booth online archive. Not everything is online but some examples are found below.

Chart: Charles Booth’s Notebooks

Ministry Of Health
The Ministry of Health was created in 1919 and various public assistance bodies succeeded the poor law authorities in 1930. The National Archives leaflet D109 describes the relevant records for the period 1919-1939 kept there.

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