Why did politicians pass the 1875 public health act.My dear fellow mps, I am here today, 1st December, 1874 to persuade you

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Why did politicians pass the 1875 public health act?

My dear fellow mps, I am here today, 1st December, 1874 to persuade you to pass the public health act of which I am going to make clear to you. We cannot delay taking action any further seeing as the future of England, our nation is our hands. It must be dealt with as a matter of urgency. People are dying as we speak because of our government turning a blind eye to what is happening before us. What I would like to happen would be for all town councils to be responsible for public health and for local government to advise and oversee.  Let us waste no time… Let us save our families… I will explain.  

There are many, many reasons why this act should be passed; and why it should be passed immediately. The evidence we now have is that dirty cities with their bad living conditions are to blame for the many devastating disease we are now suffering from including tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid and scarlet fever. I would like to mention the name of a great man to you all, Edwin Chadwick who has made the connection between health and hygiene. He like myself, feels strongly about public health and has visited many towns and in 1842 he published a report, which said that British towns faced serious problems. Surely it would be cheaper to look after the poor if more money was spent on improving their living conditions.

In addition, there has been a rapid growth in the size of the major towns. This has led to severely overcrowded badly built houses and shortages of pure water and a steep rise in the death rate among townsfolk. While doctors believe that the miasmic state of the air is responsible for the great number of deaths that have been caused by disease, we simply cannot believe this nonsense any longer!

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Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and Robert Koch have proved that germs are the cause of human diseases. Lord Shaftsbury is now an important supporter of improving the living conditions of the poorest groups of society and Robert Peel, our former Prime Minister set up a royal commission to find out about water supplies in 50 large towns. His findings said that water in cities was poor or inadequate. Moreover, William Farr has recorded the details about how people died. This means we are now aware of how badly our country has been affected because before there was no ...

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