Development of public health administration in Glasgow, 1842-1872

Abstract

This thesis outlines the course of public health improvement in Glasgow between l842 and 1872, through the medium of local government administration. After an Introduction in which the general sanitary condition of the city in the middle years of the nineteenth century is described, the thesis examines four main areas of public health - administration, cleansing, the control of epidem diseases and improvement of working class housing. Section I examines the reform of administration. Chapter 2 outlines the changing pattern of administration throughout the period. Chapters 3 to 6 describe the various local government bodies which existed prior to l846 and their relationships, the extension of the city over the suburbs in 1846 which provided the essential administrative basis for reform, and the subsequent evolution of municipal and parochial public health administration. Section II deals with the cleansing of the city in its widest sense. After an opening chapter, Chapter 7, which looks briefly at the problems of cleansing throughout the period and the methods adopted for tackling them, the various local authorities responsible for general sanitation are examined, the evolution of cleansing methods and the effectiveness of these in practice. Two final chapters in this section, Chapters 13 and 14, look at the related problems of sewage disposal and smoke control and the local authority's response to these, andfinally the successful introduction of a water supply. Section III deals with the local authority's role in the control and prevention of epidemic disease. Chapter 15 looks at the whole spectrum of morbidity and mortality in Glasgow with regard to communicable diseases. Chapters 16 and 18 look at two different periods of exceptional epidemic disease and the varying successes of the local authorities in each period in coping with the emergency. Chapter 17, which links them, shows the gradual change of emphasis in local authority attitudes towards responsibility for epidemic disease and the changing role of municipality and parochial boards in this field.The final section, Section IV, looks at the problem of housing the working classes in Glasgow. Chapter 19 outlines the build-up of the city from a comparatively small size in 1800 to a major conurbation by 1872, with inevitable divisions into rich and poor areas, and shows the changing pattern of working class housing throughout the period with a parallel change in middle-class attitudes towards the way in which the poor lived. Chapter 20 outlines the attempts by the local authority to solve the most pressing problems in housing, including overcrowding in small homes, the lack of any building regulations, the proliferation of common lodging houses and the increasing need for slum clearance. A final Chapter, Chapter 21, looks back over the whole period and attempts to assess the part played by local authorities in bringing about an improvement in the health of the city. It is hoped that this thesis will show not only how one city, a major industrial centre and a city with an unenviable reputation for dirt and disease in the midnineteenth century, attempted to put its house in order with regard to public health, but also the varying factors at work which made change possible. These included the development of national and local statute law to persuade and then compel public health improvement, the influence of major sanitarians with a national reputation and of dedicated individuals within the council and among the municipal employees in Glasgow itself, and finally the development of scientific theories which linked dirt and disease together. These factors were to assist in bringing about a change from general indifference to public health on the part of the general public, to an awareness of the need for improvement and so to a final acceptance of the reforms outlined in this thesis.