Healthy Homes

HEALTHY HOMES.

"The best security for civilization is the dwelling. "--_B. Disraeli_.

"Cleanliness is the elegance of the poor."--_English Proverb_.

"Sanitas sanitatum, et omnia sanitas."--_Julius Menochius_.

"Virtue never dwelt long with filth and nastiness."--_Count Rumford_.

"More servants wait on Man Than he'll take notice of: in every path He treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him pale and wan."--_George Herbert_.

Health is said to be wealth. Indeed, all wealth is valueless without health. Every man who lives by labour, whether of mind or body, regards health as one of the most valuable of possessions. Without it, life would be unenjoyable. The human system has been so framed as to render enjoyment one of the principal ends of physical life. The whole arrangement, structure, and functions of the human system are beautifully adapted for that purpose.

The exercise of every sense is pleasurable,--the exercise of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and muscular effort. What can be more pleasurable, for instance, than the feeling of entire health,--health, which is the sum-total of the functions of life, duly performed? "Enjoyment," says Dr. Southwood Smith, "is not only the end of life, but it is the only condition of life which is compatible with a protracted term of existence. The happier a human being is, the longer he lives; the more he suffers, the sooner he dies. To add to enjoyment, is to lengthen life; to inflict pain, is to shorten its duration."

Happiness is the rule of healthy existence; pain and misery are its exceptional conditions. Nor is pain altogether an evil; it is rather a salutary warning. It tells us that we have transgressed some rule, violated some law, disobeyed some physical obligation. It is a monitor which warns us to amend our state of living. It virtually says,--Return to nature, observe her laws, and be restored to happiness. Thus, paradoxical though it may seem, pain is one of the conditions of the physical well-being of man; as death, according to Dr. Thomas Brown, is one of the conditions of the enjoyment of life.

To enjoy physical happiness, therefore, the natural laws must be complied with. To discover and observe these laws, man has been endowed with the gift of reason. Does he fail to exercise this gift,--does he neglect to comply with the law of his being,--then pain and disease are the necessary consequence.

Man violates the laws of nature in his own person, and he suffers accordingly. He is idle and overfeeds himself: he is punished by gout, indigestion, or apoplexy. He drinks too much: he becomes bloated, trembling, and weak; his appetite falls off, his strength declines, his constitution decays; and he falls a victim to the numerous diseases which haunt the steps of the drunkard.

Society suffers in the same way. It leaves districts undrained, and streets uncleaned. Masses of the population are allowed to live crowded together in unwholesome dens, half poisoned by the mephitic air of the neighbourhood. Then a fever breaks out,--or a cholera, or a plague. Disease spreads from the miserable abodes of the poor into the comfortable homes of the rich, carrying death and devastation before it. The misery and suffering incurred in such cases, are nothing less than wilful, inasmuch as the knowledge necessary to avert them is within the reach of all.

Wherever any number of persons live together, the atmosphere becomes poisoned, unless means be provided for its constant change and renovation. If there be not sufficient ventilation, the air becomes charged with carbonic acid, principally the product of respiration. Whatever the body discharges, becomes poison to the body if introduced again through the lungs. Hence the immense importance of pure air. A deficiency of food may be considerably less injurious than a deficiency of pure air. Every person above fourteen years of age requires about six hundred cubic feet of shut-up space to breathe in during the twenty-four hours.[1] If he sleeps in a room of smaller dimensions, he will suffer more or less, and gradually approach the condition of being smothered.

[Footnote 1: Where six hundred cubic feet of space is allowed, the air requires to be changed, by ventilation, five times in the hour, in order to keep it pure. The best amount of space to be allowed for a healthy adult is about eight hundred cubic feet. The air which is breathed becomes so rapidly impure, that a constant supply of fresh air must be kept up to make the air of the shut-up space fit for breathing. The following are some amounts of space per head which are met with in practice:--

Artizan rooms 200 cubic feet. Metropolitan Lodging Houses 240 " Poor Law Board Dormitories 300 " Barrack Regulation 60 " The best Hospitals 1,500 to 2,000 cubic feet.]

Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he will die in the same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old, principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived, and eventually got well. He was cured by the pure air.

The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is fever. The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the _fever tax_. It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die. Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from _preventible_ disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than five millions sterling annually. But this is only the physical and pecuniary loss. The moral loss is infinitely greater.

Where are now the "happy humble swains" and the "gentle shepherds" of the old English poets? At the present time, they are nowhere to be found. The modern Strephon and Phyllis are a very humble pair, living in a clay-floored cottage, and maintaining a family on from twelve to fifteen shillings a week. And so far from Strephon spending his time in sitting by a purling stream playing "roundelays" upon a pipe,--poor fellow! he can scarcely afford to smoke one, his hours of labour are so long, and his wages are so small. As for Daphnis, he is a lout, and can neither read nor write; nor is his Chloe any better.

Phineas Fletcher thus sang of "The Shepherd's Home:"--

"Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state! When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate. Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns: No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep: Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep: Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent: His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease; Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.'

Where, oh where, has this gentle shepherd gone? Have spinning-jennies swallowed him up? Alas! as was observed of Mrs. Harris, "there's no such a person." Did he _ever_ exist? We have a strong suspicion that he never did, save in the imaginations of poets.

Before the age of railroads and sanitary reformers, the pastoral life of the Arcadians was a beautiful myth, The Blue Book men have exploded it for ever. The agricultural labourers have not decent houses,--only miserable huts, to live in. They have but few provisions for cleanliness or decency. Two rooms for sleeping and living in, are all that the largest family can afford. Sometimes they have only one. The day-room, in addition to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the washing apparatus, agricultural implements, and dirty clothes. In the sleeping apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeps in the same and only room, which has generally no window,--the openings in the half-thatched roof admitting light, and exposing the family to every vicissitude of the weather. The husband, having no comfort at home, seeks it in the beershop. The children grow up without decency or self-restraint. As for the half-hearted wives and daughters, their lot is very miserable.

It is not often that village affairs are made the subject of discussion in newspapers, for the power of the press has not yet reached remote country places. But we do hear occasionally of whole villages being pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them "becoming nests of beggars' brats." A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess before a Parliamentary Committee, that he "had pulled down between twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing, would have been inhabited by young married couples." And what becomes of the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.

Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their country's pride."

The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par with their physical state. Those in the western counties are as little civilized as the poor people in the east of London. A report of the Diocesan Board of the county of Hereford states that "a great deal of the superstition of past ages lingers in our parishes. The observation of lucky and unlucky days and seasons is by no means unusual; the phases of the moon are regarded with great respect,--in one, medicine may be taken, in another it is advisable to kill a pig; over the doors of many houses may be found twigs placed crosswise, and never suffered to lose their cruciform position; and the horseshoe preserves its old station on many a stable-door. Charms are devoutly believed in; a ring made from a shilling, offered at the communion, is an undoubted cure for fits; hair plucked from the crop on an ass's shoulder, and woven into a chain, to be put round a child's neck, is powerful for the same purpose; and the hand of a corpse applied to the neck is believed to disperse a wen. The 'evil eye,' so long dreaded in uneducated countries, has its terrors among us; and if a person of ill life be suddenly called away, there are generally some who hear his 'tokens,' or see his ghost. There exists, besides, the custom of communicating deaths to hives of bees, in the belief that they invariably abandon their owners if the intelligence be withheld."

Sydney Smith has said, with more truth than elegance, that in the infancy of all nations, even the most civilized, men lived the life of pigs; and if sanitary reporters had existed in times past as they do now, we should doubtless have received an account of the actual existence and domestic accommodation of the old English "swains" and "shepherds," very different from that given by Phineas Fletcher. Even the mechanics of this day are more comfortably lodged than the great landed gentry of the Saxon and Norman periods: and if the truth could be got at, it would be found that, bad as is the state of our agricultural labourers now, the condition of their forefathers was no better.

The first method of raising a man above the life of an animal is to provide him with a healthy home. The Home is after all the best school for the world. Children grow up into men and women there; they imbibe their best and their worst morality there; and their morals and intelligence are in a great measure well or ill trained there. Men can only be really and truly humanized and civilized through the institution of the Home. There is domestic purity and moral life in the good home; and individual defilement and moral death in the bad one. The schoolmaster has really very little to do with the formation of the characters of children. These are formed in the home, by the father and mother,--by brothers, sisters, and companions. It does not matter how complete may be the education given in schools. It may include the whole range of knowledge: yet if the scholar is under the necessity of daily returning to a home which is indecent, vicious, and miserable, all this learning will prove of comparatively little value. Character and disposition are the result of home training; and if these are, through bad physical and moral conditions, deteriorated and destroyed, the intellectual culture acquired in the school may prove an instrumentality for evil rather than for good.

The home should not be considered merely as an eating and sleeping place; but as a place where self-respect may be preserved, and comfort secured, and domestic pleasures enjoyed. Three-fourths of the petty vices which degrade society, and swell into crimes which disgrace it, would shrink before the influence of self-respect. To be a place of happiness, exercising beneficial influences upon its members,--and especially upon the children growing up within it,--the home must be pervaded by the spirit of comfort, cleanliness, affection, and intelligence. And in order to secure this, the presence of a well-ordered, industrious, and educated woman is indispensable. So much depends upon the woman, that we might almost pronounce the happiness or unhappiness of the home to be woman's work. No nation can advance except through the improvement of the nation's homes; and these can only be improved through the instrumentality of women. They must _know_ how to make homes comfortable; and before they can know, they must have been taught.

Women must, therefore, have sufficient training to fit them for their duties in real life. Their education should be conducted throughout, with a view to their future position as wives, mothers, and housewives. But amongst all classes, even the highest, the education of girls is rarely conducted with this object. Amongst the working people, the girls are sent out to work; amongst the higher classes, they are sent out to learn a few flashy accomplishments; and men are left to pick from them, very often with little judgment, the future wives and mothers of England.

Men themselves attach little or no importance to the intelligence or industrial skill of women; and they only discover their value when they find their homes stupid and cheerless. Men are caught by the glance of a bright eye, by a pair of cherry cheeks, by a handsome figure; and when they "fall in love," as the phrase goes, they never bethink them of whether the "loved one" can mend a shirt or cook a pudding. And yet the most sentimental of husbands must come down from his "ecstatics" so soon as the knot is tied; and then he soon enough finds out that the clever hands of a woman are worth far more than her bright glances; and if the shirt and pudding qualifications be absent, then woe to the unhappy man, and woe also to the unhappy woman! If the substantial element of physical comfort be absent from the home, it soon becomes hateful; the wife, notwithstanding all her good looks, is neglected; and the public-house separates those whom the law and the Church have joined together.

Men are really desperately ignorant respecting the home department. If they thought for a moment of its importance, they would not be so ready to rush into premature housekeeping. Ignorant men select equally ignorant women for their wives; and these introduce into the world families of children, whom they are utterly incompetent to train as rational or domestic beings. The home is no home, but a mere lodging, and often a very comfortless one.

We speak not merely of the poorest labourers, but of the best-paid workmen in the large manufacturing towns. Men earning from two to three pounds a week,--or more than the average pay of curates and bankers' clerks,--though spending considerable amounts on beer, will often grudge so small a part of their income as half-a-crown a week to provide decent homes for themselves and their children. What is the consequence? They degrade themselves and their families. They crowd together, in foul neighbourhoods, into dwellings possessing no element of health or decency; where even the small rental which they pay is in excess of the accommodation they receive. The results are inevitable,--loss of self-respect, degradation of intelligence, failure of physical health, and premature death. Even the highest-minded philosopher, placed in such a situation, would gradually gravitate towards brutality.

But the amount thus saved, or rather not expended on house-rent, is not economy; it is reckless waste. The sickness caused by the bad dwelling involves frequent interruptions of work, and drains upon the Savings Bank or the Benefit Society; and a final and rapid descent to the poor-rates. Though the loss to the middle and upper classes is great, the loss is not for a moment to be compared with that which falls upon the working classes themselves, through their neglect in providing wholesome and comfortable dwellings for their families. It is, perhaps, not saying too much to aver, that one-half the money expended by benefit societies in large towns, may be set down as pecuniary loss arising from bad and unhealthy homes.

But there is a worse consequence still. The low tone of physical health thereby produced is one of the chief causes of drunkenness. Mr. Chadwick once remonstrated with an apparently sensible workman on the expenditure of half his income on whisky. His reply was, "Do you, sir, come and live here, and you will drink whisky too." Mr. Leigh says, "I would not be understood that habits of intoxication are _wholly_ due to a defective sanitary condition; but no person can have the experience I have had without coming to the conclusion that _unhealthy_ and unhappy homes,--loss of _vital_ and consequently of _industrial_ energy, and a consciousness of inability to control external circumstances,--induce thousands to escape from miserable depression in the temporary excitement of noxious drugs and intoxicating liquors. They are like the seamen who struggle for awhile against the evils by which they are surrounded, but at last, seeing no hope, stupefy themselves with drink, and perish."

It may be said, in excuse, that working people must necessarily occupy such houses as are to be had, and pay the rental asked for them, bad and unwholesome though they be. But there is such a thing as supply and demand; and the dwellings now supplied are really those which are most in demand, because of their lowness of rental. Were the working classes to shun unwholesome districts, and low-priced dwellings, and rent only such tenements as were calculated to fulfil the requirements of a wholesome and cleanly home, the owners of property would be compelled to improve the character of their houses, and raise them to the required standard of comfort and accommodation. The real remedy must lie with the working classes themselves. Let them determine to raise their standard of rental, and the reform is in a great measure accomplished.

We have already shown how masters have done a great deal for the better accommodation of their work-people--how the benefactors of the poor, such as Mr. Peabody and Lady Burdett Coutts, have promoted the building of healthy homes. Yet the result must depend upon the individual action of the working classes themselves. When they have the choice of living in a dwelling situated in a healthy locality, and of another situated in an unhealthy locality, they ought to choose the former. But very often they do not. There is perhaps a difference of sixpence a week in the rental, and, not knowing the advantages of health, they take the unhealthy dwelling because it is the cheapest. But the money that sickly people have to pay for physic, doctors' bills, and loss of wages, far more than exceeds the amount saved by cheaper rental,--not to speak of the loss of comfort, the want of cleanliness, and the depression of spirits, which is inevitable where foul air is breathed.

To build a wholesome dwelling costs little more than to build an unwholesome one. What is wanted on the part of the builder is, a knowledge of sanitary conditions, and a willingness to provide the proper accommodation. The space of ground covered by the dwelling is the same in both cases; the quantity of bricks and mortar need be no greater; and pure air is of the same price as foul air. Light costs nothing.

A healthy home, presided over by a thrifty, cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, of virtue, and of happiness. It may be the scene of every ennobling relation in family life. It may be endeared to a man by many delightful memories, by the affectionate voices of his wife, his children, and his neighbours. Such a Home will be regarded, not as a mere nest of common instinct, but as a training-ground for young immortals, a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from storms, a sweet resting-place after labour, a consolation in sorrow, a pride in success, and a joy at all times.

Much has been done to spread the doctrines of Sanitary Science. There is no mystery attached to it, otherwise we should have had professors teaching it in colleges (as we have now), and graduates practising it amongst the people. It is only of recent years that it has received general recognition; and we owe it, not to the medical faculty, but to a barrister, that it has become embodied in many important Acts of Parliament.

Edwin Chadwick has not yet received ordinary justice from his contemporaries. Though he has been one of the most indefatigable and successful workers of the age, and has greatly influenced the legislation of his time, he is probably less known than many a fourth-rate parliamentary talker.

Mr. Chadwick belongs to a Lancashire family, and was born near Manchester. He received his education chiefly in London. Having chosen the law for his profession, he was enrolled a student of the Inner Temple in his twenty-sixth year. There he "ate his way" to the Bar; maintaining himself by reporting and writing for the daily press. He was not a man of an extraordinary amount of learning. But he was a sagacious and persevering man. He was ready to confront any amount of labour in prosecuting an object, no matter how remote its attainment might at first sight appear to be.

At an early period in his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed by an idea. It is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea, provided its aim and end be beneficent. It gives a colour and bias to the whole of a man's life. The idea was not a new one; but being taken up by an earnest, energetic, and hard-working man, there was some hope for the practical working out of his idea in the actual life of humanity. It was neither more nor less than the Sanitary Idea,--the germ of the sanitary movement.

We must now briefly state how he worked his way to its practical realization. It appears that Mr. Morgan, the Government actuary, had stated before a parliamentary committee, that though the circumstances of the middle classes had improved, their "expectation of life" had not lengthened. This being diametrically opposed to our student's idea, he endeavoured to demonstrate the fallacy of the actuary's opinion. He read up and sifted numerous statistical documents,--Blue Books, life-tables, and population-tables. He bored his way through the cumbrous pile, and brought an accumulation of facts from the most unlooked-for quarters, for the purpose of illustrating his idea, and elucidating his master-thought.

The result was published in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1828. Mr. Chadwick demonstrated, by an immense array of facts and arguments, that the circumstances which surround human beings _must_ have an influence upon their health; that health _must_ improve with an improvement of these circumstances; that many of the diseases and conditions unfavourable to human life were under man's control, and capable of being removed; that the practice of vaccination, the diminution of hard drinking amongst the middle and upper classes, the increase of habits of cleanliness, the improvements in medical science, and the better construction of streets and houses, _must_, according to all medical and popular experience, have contributed, _à priori_, to lengthen life; and these he proved by a citation of facts from numerous authentic sources. In short, Mr. Morgan was wrong. The "expectancy of life," as is now universally admitted, has improved and is rapidly improving amongst the better classes; but it was never thoroughly demonstrated until Edwin Chadwick undertook the discussion of the question.

Another article, which Mr. Chadwick published in the _London Review_, in 1829, on "Preventive Police," was read by Jeremy Bentham, then in his eighty-second year, who so much admired it, that he craved an introduction to the writer. The consequence was the formation of a friendship that lasted without interruption until the death of the philosopher in 1832. Mr. Bentham wished to engage the whole of his young friend's time in assisting him with the preparation of his Administrative Code, and he offered to place him in independent circumstances if he would devote himself exclusively to the advancement of his views. The offer was, however, declined.

Mr. Chadwick completed his law studies, and was called to the bar in November, 1830. He was preparing to enter upon the practice of common law, occasionally contributing articles to the _Westminster_, when he was, in 1832, appointed a commissioner, in conjunction with Dr. Southwood Smith and Mr. Tooke, to investigate the question of Factory Labour, which Lord Ashley and Mr. Sadler were at that time strongly pressing upon public attention. The sanitary idea again found opportunity for expression in the report of the commission, which referred to "defective drainage, ventilation, water supply, and the like, as causes of disease,--acting, concurrently with excessive toil, to depress the health and shorten the lives of the factory population."

In the same year (1832) an important Commission of Inquiry was appointed by Lord Grey's Government, in reference to the operation of the Poor Laws in England and Wales. Mr. Chadwick was appointed one of the assistant commissioners, for the purpose of taking evidence on the subject; and the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him. His report, published in the following year, was a model of what a report should be. It was full of information, admirably classified and arranged, and was so racy,--by virtue of the facts brought to light, and the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were spoken,--that the report may be read with interest by the most inveterate enemy of blue-books.

Mr. Chadwick showed himself so thoroughly a master of the subject,--his suggestions were so full of practical value,--that he was, shortly after the publication of the report, advanced from the post of assistant commissioner to that of chief commissioner: and he largely shared, with Mr. Senior, in the labours and honours of the commissioners' report submitted to the House of Commons in 1834, and also in the famous Poor-Law Amendment Act passed in the same year, in which the recommendations of the commissioners were substantially adopted and formalized.

One may venture to say now, without fear of contradiction, that that law was one of the most valuable that has been placed on the statute-book in modern times. And yet no law proved more unpopular than this was, for years after it had been enacted. But Mr. Chadwick never ceased to have perfect faith in the soundness of the principles on which it was based, and he was indefatigable in defending and establishing it. It has been well said, that "to become popular is an easy thing; but to do unpopular justice,--that requires a Man." And Edwin Chadwick is the man who has never failed in courage to do the right thing, even though it should prove to be the unpopular thing.

Whilst burrowing amidst the voluminous evidence on the Poor Laws, Mr. Chadwick never lost sight of his sanitary idea. All his reports were strongly imbued with it. One-fourth of the then existing pauperism was traced by him to the preventible causes of disease. His minute investigations into the condition of the labouring population and of the poorer classes generally, gave him a thorough acquaintance with the physical evils that were preying upon the community, carrying them off by fevers, consumption, and cholera; and the sanitary idea took still firmer possession of his mind.

One day, in 1838, while engaged in his official vocation of Secretary to the Poor-Law Commission, an officer of the Whitechapel Union hastily entered the Board-room of the Poor-Law Commission, and, with a troubled countenance, informed the secretary that a terrible fever had broken out round a stagnant pool in Whitechapel; that the people were dying by scores; and that the extreme malignity of the cases gave reason to apprehend that the disease was allied to Asiatic cholera. On hearing this, the Board, at Mr. Chadwick's instance, immediately appointed Drs. Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith to investigate the causes of this alarming mortality, and to report generally upon the sanitary condition of London. This inquiry at length ripened into the sanitary inquiry.

In the meantime, Mr. Chadwick had been engaged as a member of the Commission, to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient constabulary force in England and Wales. The evidence was embodied in a report, as interesting as a novel of Dickens, which afforded a curious insight into the modes of living, the customs and habits, of the lowest classes of the population. When this question had been dismissed, Mr. Chadwick proceeded to devote himself almost exclusively to the great work of his life,--the Sanitary Movement.

The Bishop of London, in 1839, moved in the Lords, that the inquiry which had been made at Mr. Chadwick's instance by Drs. Southwood Smith, Arnott, and Kay, into the sanitary state of the metropolis, should be extended to the whole population, city, rural, and manufacturing, of England and Wales. Some residents in Edinburgh also petitioned that Scotland might be included; and accordingly, in August, 1839, Lord John Russell addressed a letter to the Poor-Law Board, authorizing them by royal command to extend to the whole of Great Britain the inquiry into preventible disease, which had already been begun with regard to the metropolis. The onerous task of setting on foot and superintending the inquiry throughout,--of sifting the evidence, and classifying and condensing it for the purposes of publication,--devolved upon Mr. Chadwick.

The first Report on the Health of Towns was ready for publication in 1842. It _ought_ to have appeared as the Official Report of the Poor-Law Board; but as the commissioners (some of whom were at variance with Mr. Chadwick with respect to the New Poor-Law) refused to assume the responsibility of a document that contained much that must necessarily offend many influential public bodies, Mr. Chadwick took the responsibility upon himself, and it was published as _his_ report,--which indeed it was,--and accepted from him as such by the commissioners.

The amount of dry, hard work encountered by Mr. Chadwick in the preparation of this and his other reports can scarcely be estimated, except by those who know anything of the labour involved in extracting from masses of evidence, written and printed, sent in from all parts of the empire, only the most striking results bearing upon the question in hand, and such as are deemed worthy of publication. The mountains of paper which Mr. Chadwick has thus bored through in his lifetime must have been immense; and could they now be presented before him in one pile, they would appal even _his_ stout heart!

The sensation excited throughout the country by the publication of Mr. Chadwick's Sanitary Report was immense. Such a revelation of the horrors lying concealed beneath the fair surface of our modern civilization, had never before been published. But Mr. Chadwick had no idea of merely creating a sensation. He had an object in view, which he persistently pursued. The report was nothing, unless its recommendations were speedily carried into effect. A sanitary party was formed; and the ministers for the time being, aided by members of both sides in politics, became its influential leaders.

A Sanitary Commission was appointed in 1844, to consider the whole question in its practical bearings. The Commission published two reports, with a view to legislation, but the Free-Trade struggle interfered, and little was done for several years. Meanwhile our sanitary reformer was occupied as a Commissioner in inquiring into the condition of the metropolis. The Commission published three reports, in which the defective drainage, sewage, and water-supply of London were discussed in detail; and these have recently been followed by important acts of legislation.

The sanitary idea at length had its triumph in the enactment of the Public Health Act of 1848, and the appointment of a General Board of Health (of which Mr. Chadwick was a member) to superintend its administration. Numerous supplemental measures have since been enacted, with the view of carrying into practical effect the sanitary principles adopted by the Board. Reports continued to be published, from time to time, full of valuable information: for instance, in reference to the application of Sewage water to agricultural purposes; on Epidemic Cholera; on Quarantine; on Drainage; on Public Lodging-houses; and the like. The sanitary movement, in short, became a "great fact;" and that it is so, we have mainly to thank Edwin Chadwick--the missionary of the Sanitary idea. It is true he was eventually dismissed from his position of influence at the Board of Health,--partly through spleen, but chiefly because of his own unaccommodating nature,--unaccommodating especially to petty local authorities and individual interests opposed to the public good. But with all thinking and impartial men, his character stands as high as it ever did. At all events, his _works_ remain.

We do not know a more striking instance than that presented by this gentleman's career, of the large amount of good which a man strongly possessed by a beneficent idea can accomplish, provided he have only the force of purpose and perseverance to follow it up. Though Mr. Chadwick has not been an actual legislator, he has nevertheless been the mover of more wise measures than any legislator of our time. He created a public opinion in favour of sanitary reform. He has also impressed the minds of benevolent individuals with the necessity for providing improved dwellings for the people; and has thus been the indirect means of establishing the Peabody Dwellings, the Baroness Coutts' Dwellings, and the various Societies for erecting improved dwellings for the industrial classes.

Edwin Chadwick has thus proved himself to be one of the most useful and practical of public benefactors. He deserves to be ranked with Clarkson or Howard. His labours have been equally salutary; some will say that they have been much more so in their results.

Sanitary science may be summed up in the one word--Cleanliness. Pure water and pure air are its essentials. Wherever there is impurity, it must be washed away and got rid of. Thus sanitary science is one of the simplest and most intelligible of all the branches of human knowledge. Perhaps it is because of this, that, like most common things, it has continued to receive so little attention. Many still think that it requires no science at all to ventilate a chamber, to clean out a drain, and to keep house and person free from uncleanness.

Sanitary science may be regarded as an unsavoury subject. It deals with dirt and its expulsion--from the skin, from the house, from the street, from the city. It is comprised in the words--wherever there is dirt, get rid of it instantly; and with cleanliness let there be a copious supply of pure water and of pure air for the purposes of human health.

Take, for instance, an unhealthy street, or block of streets, in a large town. There you find typhus fever constantly present. Cleanse and sewer the street; supply it with pure air and pure water, and fever is forthwith banished. Is not this a much more satisfactory result than the application of drugs? Fifty thousand persons, says Mr. Lee, annually fall victims to typhus fever in Great Britain, originated by causes which are preventible. The result is the same as if these fifty thousand persons were annually taken out of their wretched dwellings, and put to death! We are shocked by the news of a murder--by the loss of a single life by physical causes! And yet we hear, almost without a shudder, the reiterated statement of the loss of tens of thousands of lives yearly from physical causes in daily operation. The annual slaughter from preventible causes of typhus fever is double the amount of what was suffered by the allied armies at the battle of Waterloo! By neglect of the ascertained conditions of healthful living, the great mass of the people lose nearly half the natural period of their lives. "Typhus," says a medical officer, "is a curse which man inflicts upon himself by the neglect of sanitary arrangements."

Mr. Chadwick affirmed that in the cellars of Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds, he had seen amongst the operatives more vice, misery, and degradation than those which, when detailed by Howard, had excited the sympathy of the world. The Irish poor sink into the unhealthy closes, lanes, and back streets of large towns; and so frequent are the attacks of typhus among them, that in some parts of the country the disease is known as "the Irish fever." It is not merely the loss of life that is so frightful; there is also the moral death that is still more appalling in these unhealthy localities. Vice and crime consort with foul living. In these places, demoralization is the normal state. There is an absence of cleanliness, of decency, of decorum; the language used is polluting, and scenes of profligacy are of almost hourly occurrence,--all tending to foster idleness, drunkenness, and vicious abandonment. Imagine such a moral atmosphere for women and children!

The connection is close and intimate between physical and moral health, between domestic well-being and public happiness. The destructive influence of an unwholesome dwelling propagates a moral typhus worse than the plague itself. Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character becomes depraved; and too often--eager to snatch even a momentary enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,--the miserable victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery, infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness.

This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly thing. It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children made fatherless, by typhus. It costs them also a great deal in disease; for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children. It costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries, infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the destitute. It costs the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only capital. In this is invested their all: if they lose it, their docket is struck, and they are bankrupt. How frightful is the neglect, whether it be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of his health, and makes his life a daily death!

Why, then, is not sanitary science universally adopted and enforced? We fear it is mainly through indifference and laziness. The local authorities--municipalities and boards of guardians--are so many Mrs. Maclartys in their way. Like that dirty matron, they "canna be fashed." To remove the materials of disease requires industry, constant attention, and--what is far more serious--increased rates. The foul interests hold their ground, and bid defiance to the attacks made upon them. Things did very well, they say, in "the good old times,"--why should they not do so now? When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame.

That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides. Nobody adulterates our food. Nobody poisons us with bad drink. Nobody supplies us with foul water. Nobody spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes. Nobody leaves towns undrained. Nobody fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict stations. Nobody makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards.

Nobody has a theory too--a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two words--_Laissez faire_--Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, "Let alone" is the remedy. When _Cocculus indicus_ is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, "Nobody did it." Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: _Caveat emptor_. When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone. Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.

"It matters nothing to me," said a rich man who heard of a poor woman and her sick child being driven forth from a town for begging. The workhouse authorities would have nothing to do with her, and sent her away. But the poor woman went and sat down with her child at the rich man's door; the child died there; the contagion of typhus was wafted into the gilded saloon and the luxurious bed-chamber and the rich man's child fell a victim to the disease.

But Nobody has considerably less power in society than he once had: and our hope is, that he may ultimately follow in the wake of Old Bogie, and disappear altogether. Wherever there is suffering and social depression, we may depend upon it that Somebody is to blame. The responsibility rests somewhere; and if we allow it to remain, it rests with us. We may not be able to cope with the evil as individuals, single-handed; but it becomes us to unite, and bring to bear upon the evil the joint moral power of society in the form of a law. A Law is but the expression of a combined will; and it does that for society, which society, in its individual and separate action, cannot so well or efficiently do for itself. Laws may do too much; they may meddle with things which ought to be "let alone;" but the abuse of a thing is no proper argument against its use, in cases where its employment is urgently called for.

Mere improvement of towns, however,--as respects drainage, sewerage, paving, water supply, and abolition of cellar dwellings,--will effect comparatively little, unless we can succeed in carrying the improvement further,--namely, into the Homes of the people themselves. A well-devised system of sanitary measures may ensure external cleanliness,--may provide that the soil on which the streets of houses are built shall be relieved of all superfluous moisture, and that all animal and vegetable refuse shall be promptly removed,--so that the air circulating through the streets, and floating from them into the houses of the inhabitants, shall not be laden with poisonous miasmata, the source of disease, suffering, and untimely death. Cellar dwellings may be prohibited, and certain regulations as to the buildings hereafter to be erected may also be enforced. But here municipal or parochial authority stops: it can go no further; it cannot penetrate into the Home, and it is not necessary that it should do so.

The individual efforts of the community themselves are therefore needed; and any legislative enactments which dispensed with these would probably be an evil. The Government does not build the houses in which the people dwell. These are provided by employers and by capitalists, small and large. It is necessary, therefore, to enlist these interests in the cause of sanitary improvement, in order to ensure success.

Individual capitalists have already done much to provide wholesome houses for their working people, and have found their account in so doing, by their increased health, as well as in their moral improvement in all ways. Capitalists imbued with a benevolent and philanthropic spirit can thus spread blessings far and wide. And were a few enterprising builders in every town to take up this question practically, and provide a class of houses for workpeople, with suitable accommodation; provided with arrangements for ventilation, cleanliness, and separation of the sexes, such as health and comfort require; they would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it would not be easy to overestimate.

But there also needs the active co-operation of the dwellers in poor men's homes themselves. They, too, must join cordially in the sanitary movement; otherwise comparatively little good can be effected. You may provide an efficient water supply, yet, if the housewife will not use the water as it ought to be used,--if she be lazy and dirty,--the house will be foul and comfortless still. You may provide for ventilation, yet, if offensive matters be not removed, and doors and windows are kept closed, the pure outer air will be excluded, and the house will still smell fusty and unwholesome. In any case, there must be a cleanly woman to superintend the affairs of the house; and she cannot be made so by Act of Parliament! The Sanitary Commissioners cannot, by any "Notification," convert the slatternly shrew into a tidy housewife, nor the disorderly drunkard into an industrious, home-loving husband. There must, therefore, be individual effort on the part of the housewife in every working man's Home. As a recent writer on Home Reform observes,--

"We must begin by insisting that, however much of the physical and moral evils of the working classes may be justly attributable to their dwellings, it is too often the case that more ought, in truth, to be attributed to themselves. For, surely, the inmate depends less on the house, than the house on the inmate; as mind has more power over matter than matter over mind. Let a dwelling be ever so poor and incommodious, yet a family with decent and cleanly habits will contrive to make the best of it, and will take care that there shall be nothing offensive in it which they have power to remove. Whereas a model house, fitted up with every convenience and comfort which modern science can supply, will, if occupied by persons of intemperate and uncleanly habits, speedily become a disgrace and a nuisance. A sober, industrious, and cleanly couple will impart an air of decency and respectability to the poorest dwelling; while the spendthrift, the drunkard, or the gambler will convert a palace into a scene of discomfort and disgust. Since, therefore, so much depends on the character and conduct of the parties themselves, it is right that they should feel their responsibility in this matter, and that they should know and attend to the various points connected with the improvement of their own Homes."

While this important truth should be kept steadily in view, every possible exertion ought, at the same time, to be made to provide a greater abundance of comfortable, decent, and comely dwellings for the working classes; for it is to be lamented that, in many districts, they are, as it were, forced by the necessities of their condition to gravitate into localities, and to inhabit dwellings where decency is rendered almost impossible, where life becomes a slow dying, and where the influences operating on the entire human energies, physical and moral, are of the most deleterious character.

Homes are the manufactories of men, and as the Homes are, so will the men be. Mind will be degraded by the physical influences around it,--decency will be destroyed by constant contact with impurity and defilement,--and coarseness of manners, habits, and tastes, will become inevitable. You cannot rear a kindly nature, sensitive against evil, careful of proprieties, and desirous of moral and intellectual improvement, amidst the darkness, dampness, disorder, and discomfort which unhappily characterize so large a portion of the dwellings of the poor in our large towns; and until we can, by some means or other, improve their domestic accommodation, their low moral and social condition must be regarded as inevitable.

We want not only a better class of dwellings, but we require the people to be so educated as to appreciate them. An Irish landlord took his tenantry out of their mud huts, and removed them into comfortable dwellings which he had built for their accommodation. When he returned to his estate, he was greatly disappointed. The houses were as untidy and uncomfortable as before. The pig was still under the bed, and the hens over it. The concrete floor was as dirty as the mud one had been. The panes of the windows were broken, and the garden was full of weeds. The landlord wrote to a friend in despair. The friend replied, "You have begun at the wrong end. You ought to have taught them the value of cleanliness, thriftiness, and comfort." To begin at the beginning, therefore, we must teach the people the necessity of cleanliness, its virtues and its wholesomeness; for which purpose it is requisite that they should be intelligent, capable of understanding ideas conveyed in words, able to discern, able to read, able to think. In short, the people, as children, must first have been to school, and properly taught there; whereas we have allowed the majority of the working people to grow up untaught, nearly half of them unable to read and write; and then we expect them to display the virtues, prudence, judgment, and forethought of well-educated beings!

It is of the first importance to teach people cleanly habits. This can be done without teaching them either reading or writing. Cleanliness is more than wholesomeness. It furnishes an atmosphere of self-respect, and influences the moral condition of the entire household. It is the best exponent of the spirit of Thrift. It is to the economy of the household, what hygiene is to the human body. It should preside at every detail of domestic service. It indicates comfort and well-being. It is among the distinctive attributes of civilisation, and marks the progress of nations.

Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of pollution. He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any other description. People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent, industrious, and self-respecting. Unclean people are uncivilized. The dirty classes of great towns are invariably the "dangerous classes" of those towns. And if we would civilize the classes yet uncivilized, we must banish dirt from amongst them.

Yet dirt forms no part of our nature. It is a parasite, feeding upon human life, and destroying it. It is hideous and disgusting. There can be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it. Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers have clearly made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes; and that they are prone to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul conditions in which they live.

We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency. We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are, to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and circumstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings and the intellectual powers.

Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers. Among the eastern nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion. They esteem it not only as next to godliness, but as a part of godliness itself. They connect the idea of internal sanctity with that of external purification. They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they worship to come into His presence covered with impurity. Hence the Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to that of mosques; and alongside the place of worship is usually found the place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of purification previous to their act of worship.

"What worship," says a great writer, "is there not in mere washing! perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool of a running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness--that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection--how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences to thy very soul! thou hast an increased tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages, with joy and holy gratitude, had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker's gift and will."

The common well-being of men, women, and children depends upon attention to what at first sight may appear comparatively trivial matters. And unless these small matters be attended to, comfort in person, mind, and feeling is absolutely impossible. The physical satisfaction of a child, for example, depends upon attention to its feeding, clothing, and washing. These are the commonest of common things, and yet they are of the most essential importance. If the child is not properly fed and clothed, it will grow up feeble and ill-conditioned. And as the child is, so will the man be.

Grown people cannot be comfortable without regular attention to these common matters. Every one needs, and ought to have, comfort at home; and comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity, industry,--in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the mending of a shirt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the washing and dressing of a baby, are all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do these, before the management of a household, however poor, is entrusted to her.

"Why," asked Lord Ashburton in a lecture to the students of the Wolvesey training-schools, "why was one mother of a family a better economist than another? Why could one live in abundance where another starved? Why, in similar dwellings, were the children of one parent healthy, of another puny and ailing? Why could this labourer do with ease a task that would kill his fellow? It was not luck nor chance that decided those differences; it was the patient observation of nature that suggested to some gifted minds rules for their guidance which had escaped the heedlessness of others."

It is not so much, however, the patient observation of nature, as good training in the home and in the school, that enables some women to accomplish so much more than others, in the development of human beings, and the promotion of human comfort. And to do this efficiently, women as well as men require to be instructed as to the nature of the objects upon which they work.

Take one branch of science as an illustration--the physiological. In this science we hold that every woman should receive some instruction. And why? Because, if the laws of physiology were understood by women, children would grow up into better, healthier, happier, and probably wiser, men and women. Children are subject to certain physiological laws, the observance of which is necessary for their health and comfort. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to expect that women should know something of those laws, and of their operation? If they are ignorant of them they will be liable to commit all sorts of blunders, productive of suffering, disease, and death. To what are we to attribute the frightful mortality of children in most of our large towns--where one-half of all that are born perish before they reach their fifth year? If women, as well as men, knew something of the laws of healthy living, about the nature of the atmosphere, how its free action upon the blood is necessary to health--of the laws of ventilation, cleanliness, and nutrition,--we cannot but think that the moral, not less than the physical condition of the human beings committed to their charge, would be greatly improved and promoted.

Were anything like a proper attention given to common things, there would not be such an amount of discomfort, disease, and mortality amongst the young. But we accustom people to act as if there were no such provisions as natural laws. If we violate them, we do not escape the consequences because we have been ignorant of their mode of operation. We have been provided with intelligence that we might _know_ them; and if society keep its members blind and ignorant, the evil consequences are inevitably reaped. Thus tens of thousands perish for lack of knowledge of even the smallest, and yet most necessary conditions of right living.

Women have also need to be taught the important art of domestic economy. If they do not earn the family income, at least they have to spend the money earned; and their instruction ought to have a view to the spending of that money wisely. For this purpose, a knowledge of arithmetic is absolutely necessary. Some may say, "What use can a woman have for arithmetic?" But when men marry, they soon find this out. If the woman who has a household to manage be innocent of addition and multiplication; and if she fail to keep a record of her income or expenditure, she will, before long, find herself in great trouble. She will find that she cannot make the ends meet, and then run into debt. If she spend too much on dress, she will have too little for food or education. She will commit extravagances in one direction or another, and thus subject her household to great discomfort. She may also bring her husband into trouble through the debts she has contracted, and make a beginning of his misfortunes and sometimes of his ruin.

Much might be said in favour of household management, and especially in favour of improved cookery. Ill-cooked meals is a source of discomfort in many families. Bad cooking is waste,--waste of money and loss of comfort. Whom God has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and ill-boiled potatoes have very often put asunder. Among the "common things" which educators should teach the rising generation, this ought certainly not to be overlooked. It is the commonest and yet most neglected of the branches of female education.

The greater part of human labour is occupied in the direct production of the materials for human food. The farming classes and their labourers devote themselves to the planting, rearing, and reaping of oats and other cereals; and the grazing farmer to the production of cattle and sheep, for the maintenance of the population at large. All these articles--corn, beef, mutton, and such-like--are handed over to the female half of the human species to be converted into food, for the sustenance of themselves, their husbands, and their families. How do they use their power? Can they cook? Have they been taught to cook? Is it not a fact that, in this country, cooking is one of the lost or undiscovered arts?

Thousands of artizans and labourers are deprived of half the actual nutriment of their food, and continue half-starved, because their wives are utterly ignorant of the art of cooking. They are yet in entire darkness as to the economizing of food, and the means of rendering it palatable and digestible.

Even the middle classes are badly served in this respect. "If we could see," says a public writer, "by the help of an Asmodeus, what is going on at the dinner hour of the humbler of the middle class,--what a spectacle of discomfort, waste, ill-temper, and consequent ill-conduct it would be! The man quarrels with his wife because there is nothing he can eat, and he generally makes up in drink for the deficiencies in the article of food. There is thus not only the direct waste of food and detriment to health, but the further consequent waste of the use of spirits, with its injury to the habits and the health."

On the other hand, people who eat well, drink moderately; the satisfaction of the appetite dispensing with the necessity for resorting to stimulants. Good humour too, and good health, follow a good meal; and by a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well dressed in its way. A rich man may live very expensively and very ill; and a poor man may live frugally and very well, if it be his good fortune to have a good cook in his wife or in his servant.

The most worthless unit in a family is an ill-managing wife, or an indolent woman of any sort. The fair sex are sometimes very acute in what concerns themselves. They keep a tight hand over their dressmakers and milliners. They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or a tuck too deep. But if their knowledge only extends to their own dress, they are not help-meets, but incumbrances. If they know nothing of their kitchen, and are at the mercy of the cook, their table will soon become intolerable. Bad soup, soft and flabby fish, meat burnt outside and raw within. The husband will soon fly from the Barmecide feast, and take refuge in his club, where he will not only find food that he can digest, but at the same time fly from the domestic discord that usually accompanies ill-cooked victuals at home.

Mr. Smee says that "diseases of the digestive organs greatly exceed in England the relative number found in other countries." The reason is, that in no other country do men eat so much ill-cooked food. The least observant of travellers must have been struck with admiration at the readiness with which a dinner of eight or ten dishes of various eatables makes its appearance in foreign inns; particularly when he remembers the perpetual mutton chop and mashed potatoes of the English road. The author remembers arriving at a roadside inn, in a remote part of Dauphiny, immediately under the foot of the Pic du Midi. On looking at the clay floor, and the worn state of the furniture, he remarked to his friend, "Surely we can get no dinner here." "Wait till you see," was his answer. In about half-an-hour, the table (though propped up) was spread with a clean table-cloth; and successive dishes of soup, fowl, "ros-bif," pomme-de-terre frite, French beans, with wholesome bread and butter, made their appearance. In the principal inns of most provincial towns in England, it would not have been possible to obtain such a dinner.

Great would be the gain to the community if cookery were made an ordinary branch of female education. To the poor, the gain would be incalculable. "Among the prizes which the Bountifuls of both sexes are fond of bestowing in the country, we should like to see some offered for the best boiled potato, the best grilled mutton chop, and the best seasoned hotch-potch, soup, or broth. In writing of a well-boiled potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt of many for attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so common. But the fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the origin of contempt, from their ignorance--there being not one person in a hundred who has ever seen and tasted that great rarity--a well-boiled potato."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Examiner_.]

In short, we want common sense in cookery, as in most other things. Food should be used, and not abused. Much of it is now absolutely wasted, wasted for want of a little art in cooking it. Food is not only wasted by bad cooking; but much of it is thrown away which French women would convert into something savoury and digestible. Health, morals, and family enjoyments, are all connected with the question of cookery. Above all, it is the handmaid of Thrift. It makes the most and the best of the bounties of God. It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account. Every Englishwoman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the members of her household.

"It appears to me," said Mrs. Margaretta Grey, "that with an increase of wealth unequally distributed, and a pressure of population, there has sprung up amongst us a spurious refinement, that cramps the energy and circumscribes the usefulness of women in the upper class of society. A lady, to be such, must be a lady, and nothing else.... Ladies dismissed from the dairy, the confectionery, the store-room, the still-room, the poultry-yard, the kitchen-garden, and the orchard" [she might have added, the spinning-wheel], "have hardly yet found for themselves a sphere equally useful and important in the pursuits of trade and art, to which to apply their too abundant leisure.

"When, at any time, has society presented, on the one hand, so large an array of respectably educated individuals, embarrassed for want of a proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a multitude of untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their misery and degradation? What an obstruction to usefulness and all eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly connected, to work at anything!"[1]

[Footnote 1: _Memoir of John Grey, of Dalston_. p. 290.]

Many intelligent, high-minded ladies, who have felt disgusted at the idleness to which "society" condemns them, have of late years undertaken the work of visiting the poor and of nursing--a noble work. But there is another school of usefulness which stands open to them. Let them study the art of common cookery, and diffuse the knowledge of it amongst the people. They will thus do an immense amount of good; and bring down the blessings of many a half-hungered husband upon their benevolent heads. Women of the poorer classes require much help from those who are better educated, or who have been placed in better circumstances than themselves. The greater number of them marry young, and suddenly enter upon a life for which they have not received the slightest preparation. They know nothing of cookery, of sewing or clothes mending, or of economical ways of spending their husbands' money. Hence slatternly and untidy habits, and uncomfortable homes, from which the husband is often glad to seek refuge in the nearest public-house. The following story, told by Joseph Corbett, a Birmingham operative, before a Parliamentary Committee, holds true of many working people in the manufacturing districts.

"My mother," he said, "worked in a manufactory from a very early age. She was clever and industrious, and, moreover, she had the reputation of being virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early. She became the mother of eleven children: I am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important duties of a wife and mother. But she was lamentably deficient in domestic knowledge. In that most important of all human instruction--how to make the home and the fireside to possess a charm for her husband and children--she had never received one single lesson. She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so everything like comfort disappeared altogether. The power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She knew not the value of cherishing in my father's mind a love of domestic objects. Not one moment's happiness did I ever see under my father's roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother. He became intemperate; and his intemperance made her necessitous. She made many efforts to abstain from shop-work; but her pecuniary necessities forced her back into the shop. The family was large; and every moment was required at home. I have known her, after the close of a hard day's work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together washing and mending clothes. My father could have no comfort there. These domestic obligations, which in a well-regulated house (even in that of a working man, where there are prudence and good management) would be done so as not to annoy the husband, were to my father a sort of annoyance; and he, from an ignorant and mistaken notion, sought comfort in an alehouse. My mother's ignorance of household duties; my father's consequent irritability and intemperance; the frightful poverty; the constant quarrelling; the pernicious example to my brothers and sisters; the bad effect upon the future conduct of my brothers,--one and all of us being forced out to work so young that our feeble earnings would produce only 1_s_. a week,--cold and hunger, and the innumerable sufferings of my childhood, crowd upon my mind and overpower me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation, female education is disgracefully neglected. I attach more importance to it than to anything else; for woman imparts the first impressions to the young susceptible mind; she models the child from which is formed the future man."