Dr. S. Smith's Report to Poor Law Commissioners.

61

These neglected wynds and courts become the nurseries of fever and small-pox to the rest of the city. One family attacked, the disease passes from inmate to inmate, and from house to house, until it exhaust its virulence by exhausting its bare and squalid victims. Here, too, fever lingers after forsaking healthier localities, ready to break forth anew on every return of this periodical scourge of Glasgow.

Of the intimate connexion between filth and fever, we shall allow Dr. Southwood Smith, Physician to the London Fever Hospital, in his Report in 1838 to the Poor Law Commissioners, to speak

:

The exhalations which accumulate in close, ill-ventilated, and crowded apartments in the confined situations of densely populated cities, where no attention is paid to the removal of putrifying and excrementitious substances, consist chiefly of animal matter. Such exhalations contain a poison which produces fever of the typhoid character. There are situations in which the poison generated is so intense and deadly, that a single inspiration of it is capable of producing instantaneous death; there are others in which a few inspirations of it are capable of destroying life in from two to twelve hours; and there are others, again, as in dirty and neglected ships-in damp, crowded, and filthy gaols-in the crowded wards of ill-ventilated hospitals, filled with persons labouring under malignant surgical diseases, and some forms of typhus fever-in the crowded, filthy, close, unventilated, damp, undrained habitations of the poor, in which the poison generated, although not so immediately fatal, is still too potent to be long breathed even by the most healthy and robust, without producing fever of a highly dangerous and mortal character. But it would be a most inadequate view of the pernicious agency of this poison, if it were restricted to the diseases commonly produced by its direct operation. It is a matter of constant observation, that even when not present in sufficient intensity to produce fever by disturbing the functions of some organ or set of organs, and thereby weakening the general system, this poison acts as a powerful predisposing cause of some of the most common and fatal maladies to which the human body is subject." Dr. Smith then proceeds to show, that by deranging the digestive organs, it is the predisposing cause of stomach-disorders, inflammations, and consumption; and concludes" If then, as is commonly computed, of the total number of deaths that take place annually over the whole surface of the globe, nearly one-half is caused by fever in its different forms; to this sum must be added the number who perish by diseases caused by the constant operation of the poison.'

But apart altogether from the waste of human life, and the

indescribable suffering and sorrow which annually fall on the working-classes from this periodical scourge, and viewed only as a matter of profit and loss, it were easy to show that the expenditure of half a million annually in clearing away the labyrinth of dwellings in the heart and skirts of our cities, would be amply repaid to the community in the annual saving of an increasing expenditure, private and public, which disease and death yearly

exact.

According to the late Dr. Cowan of Glasgow, whose Vital Statistics formed so important a contribution to our knowledge of the social state of that city, 55,949 persons had been attacked with fever in Glasgow during the five years ending 1840; that is, every fifth person had been attacked by fever in that short period, of whom 4788 died. Thus in five years, fever has twice made Glasgow pay the most cruel of all tithes that of personal and family suffering, and cut off nearly 5000 persons, choosing its victims in the manhood of life, and compelling her inhabitants to pay a tax frightful in the amount of personal suffering and family bereavements.

But it were a mistake to imagine that the suffering and death of so many inhabitants are the only tithes which fever compelled the citizens of Glasgow to pay during these five years. Put wholly aside the details of personal suffering which 55,949 cases of fever introduced into the families of Glasgow and suburbs, and all reckoning of the watching, want and woe, wrapped up in so many cases of acute disease, and the family bereavements implied in 4788 deaths, and let us estimate our fellow-creatures but as so many machines suspended from work by the derangement or destruction of the human machine, that we may learn the pecuniary loss involved in the Fever Bill of Glasgow.

From Dr. Southwood Smith, we learn that fully one-half of the cases of fever occur in the prime of life, when men are or ought to be most serviceable both to their families and to society. Deducting then 4788 deaths, there will remain 51,161 cases of fever, at least one-half of whom were adults, very many of them heads of houses, and the breadwinners of their respective families; that is, 25,580 full-grown persons in Glasgow were on a fever bed during those five years. Now the average period which fever detains a patient from work, according to the same authority, is six weeks. Let us take the earnings, in health, of 25,580 adults at the average of eight shillings a-weck, and the loss of wages by six weeks' detention on a fever bed, amounts to the sum of £60,392. But these fever cases, whether treated at home or in the Hospital, must be loaded with the expense of medical aid, which is estimated by the Reports of Infirmaries at £1 to each case, that is, £25,580 to all those cases. There still

Fever Bill of Glasgow for Five Years.

63

remain the other half, or 25,580 under age, yet not children, which fever seldom attacks. We may safely estimate the loss of labour to these last as equal to at least two shillings a-weekthe fourth of the adults, at £15,348 during six weeks' detention from work, to which add the expense of medical treatment, estimated also at a fourth, or £6495.

The Fever Bill of Glasgow for those five years, omitting wholly the 4788 deaths, will stand thus:

Loss of labour for six weeks to 25,580 adults, at 8s. per week,

Medical attendance to above, at £1 to each

£60,392 0 0

25,580 0 0

Loss of labour for six weeks to 25,580 under age, at 2s. per week,

15,348 0 0

Expense of medical treatment, at 5s. to each of

above,

or £21,563 per annum.

But why not as well estimate the loss by every species of disease to which flesh is heir, and present a like account of the entire gain to society were disease and death for ever abolished? The answer to this is obvious. Can any one pretend that the fever and mortality bills of Glasgow present the lowest amount of fever or mortality to which flesh is heir? Let the fever bills of the towns of England answer. True-fever, like every other disease is the visitation of God; but in its aggravated form and extent in our Scottish towns, it is the visitation of God for the sin of neglecting the physical and moral wellbeing of its inhabitants. It is the scourge of national filth and inhumanity, the natural penalty of suffering the poor to crowd and stifle one another in pestilential wynds, or to rot helpless, unvisited, and unrelieved in their wretched dwellings. Why is the mortality in our rural districts so small as 1 in 48, but in Glasgow at times so high as 1 in 28? Why are England's towns more healthy than Scotland's, though their employments are the same?—whether we contrast town with country, or English with Scottish towns, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a large amount of the fever and mortality of Glasgow is self-inflicted, and admits of being self-removed. There are, beyond all doubt, ways and means within the reach of the middle and upper classes, and the Government of this country, of extinguishing onethird, perhaps one-half of the fever cases of Glasgow and other towns of Scotland, of delivering their inhabitants from an un

known and unknowable weight of sufferings personal and domestic, of rescuing thousands of our fellow-men from a premature grave, and of adding largely to the moneyed resources of this nation, by the wise and systematic discharge of the duties of humanity.

If there be any one social improvement for which all parties may unite, it is the improvement of the dwellings of the poor, and the removal of those nuisances and mal-arangements which at present poison their atmosphere. This is no question of Tory, Whig, or Radical-Church or Dissent-but the common cause of humanity and self-preservation. If our religious dissensions forbid the Government of this great nation from extending the means of religious instruction, and threaten even to forbid its intermeddling with the common school instruction of the people, here at least is common ground. As in Ireland's frightful famine, Protestants and Roman Catholics are uniting against the common calamity, and forgetting all but their common brotherhood and common duties to the poor; so, if we would avert from our cities calamities more perilous because more concentrated, let us forget every thing but the fact that vast and gathering masses of our town population have fallen, and cannot raise themselves-are miserable, and demand our help.

We understood that in the new Police Bill of Glasgow, power was to be taken to tax the citizens for the improvement of the habitations of thepoor. The proposed tax was to be one penny in the pound on the valued rental, and was estimated to yield the sum of £2500 a-year. We have not learned whether this clause made its way through the House of Commons, or whether it was cast out as one penny too much for such an object. In or out, it is of small moment. It is not by such peppercorns that this great evil is to be combated. "There is no such thing as a little war," said the Duke of Wellington. Only think it a little war, and it will speedily become a great one. There is no "little war" with these social evils. The Duke of Wellington gained his battles by concentrating his forces and outnumbering his enemy at each point of attack; so did he carry his peaceful triumphs in the metropolis of England, not by a penny-a-pound-tax, but by a million sterling obtained for the improvement of London. He lent the aid of his sound judgment and powerful influence to arrange the details and carry into execution those many intersections of the densest parts of the English metropolis, which have opened up to the air and light of heaven the dwellings of poverty, and have rendered one of the largest also one of the healthiest of cities. Not thousands but millions must be spent on the manufacturing cities of the Empire to repair the neglect of the past fifty years.

Penny-a-pound Tax-Railway Terminus in Glasgow. 65

Half a century ago £2500 a-year might have done somewhat to such a city as Glasgow then was, but the mole-hill has become a mountain, and tens of thousands will not repair and renovate its social condition. Before this penny-a-pound tax is exhausted, and its ten years' beneficence has overflowed on the Vennels of Glasgow, its population will have again expended another 79,000 souls. No man will be able to see the good done, in the greater evils that have arisen. Our physical improvement, like our church and school building, looks large only to those that take not the proportions of things, nor regard what remains behind undone. Those who take the measure of the evil as well as the. good, know well that the good keeps no pace with the growth of our social evils, and lays no sure foundation for the permanent elevation of the fallen population.

The Royal Commission for considering and reporting upon the advantages of a central railway terminus in Glasgow, had submitted to them a scheme for converting the wynds in the very heart of Glasgow into a great central terminus; and the promoters of this scheme rested its chief merit "upon the circumstance that, the wynds being crowded by the most destitute of the inhabitants of Glasgow, and a hot-bed of disease and crime, the removal and opening out of such a quarter would effect so great a sanatory improvement, and be of such advantage to the city generally, as ought to give to this scheme a preference." On this scheme her Majesty's Commissioners observe with much good sense,

"We consider this a very doubtful point, and think it by no means certain that the removal of the Wynds, by simply dispossessing the present occupiers, would effect a sanatary improvement of the city, as it formed no part of Mr. Muir's scheme to provide another or better abodes for them; besides, improvements of this nature are more properly the business of the authorities and guardians of the city than of railway companies, when the accommodation they would obtain but imperfectly fulfils its object."

This grave matter must be taken up by itself and for its own sake-not by the way, as a secondary matter that may follow in the train of some other better paying concern. The Government of this nation must not only do its part, by sanatory, regulations for the future, but must contribute liberally to the object of removing existing evils in aid of local efforts, stimulating, and if necessary, compelling the localities to do their duty to-, wards elevating the condition of the poor. The railway mania may delay this great question for a little; but that very wealth and population which the railway system is expected to develop and concentrate upon our towns, will render their improvement a more urgent and imperious question than ever. Hitherto we have only talked of doing our duty. Each new outbreak of

VOL. VII. NO. XIII.

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