Morley: City chaos, contagion, Chadwick, and social justice 71 property [health, well-being], did they do the poor man justice?” [34] CONCLUSION From the early 1800s onward, the British were faced with understanding and managing two phenomenon associated with the Industrial Revolution. The first was an extraordinary level of urban problems fol- lowing the rapid growth of existing towns and cities from the late 1700s. Then, as much as industrialization’s onset was as- sumed to provide an upward trend in the condition of society, the British had to ac- cept by the 1830s that this notion was flawed, as evidence provided by the medical community was starting to prove. As a con- sequence, the British had to redefine their orthodoxy on material progress and fully ap- preciate that differences one had in terms of life expectation and health from birth was manifest within the industrial social milieu. However, to comprehend and then manage this situation was far from straightforward. Legal, scientific, moral, economic, and po- litical concerns all had to be meshed into a coherent strategy before problems of health and housing, for instance, could be tackled directly. Moreover, to activate any political strategy required a superlative sanitary tech- nocrat, someone of pragmatism and political know-how, as well as some degree of sani- tary understanding. In the case of early 1800s Britain, thankfully, a number of indi- viduals of vision did step forward and pro- vided rational perspectives and solutions to the “Condition of England Question.” Central to the British process of dealing with the malformed nature of urban society in light of industrial change and rapid urban- ization was Edwin Chadwick, who from the early 1830s initiated mechanisms and inves- tigations to improve the health of the popu- lation. Coping with an enormously challenging task, Chadwick, by 1848, had laid down basic principles for improving public health in Britain, organized municipal governments into acting as centrally account- able health authorities, and promoted a more effective provision for improving sanitary conditions that meant, for example, all new houses and streets had to be built to certain structural criterion. Thanks to Chadwick’s political influence, public health proponents were able to establish it as an entrenched re- sponsibility of local and national government in Britain, just as it did in subsequent years in other societies. Importantly, too, due to the broad nature of Chadwick’s sanitary report in 1842, a view was borne that poor health was affected by a variety of causative factors, even if these were somewhat contestable given limited contemporary scientific knowl- edge. Even so, the formative national public health framework constructed in 1848 was able to embrace a plethora of dynamics con- sidered as having a negative impact on peo- ple’s moral and physical well-being. To conclude, although the chronological frame presented by this paper is limited, mas- sive transformations with regard to urban think- ing were made in the 1830s and 1840s that still echo today. The British attitude toward public health, albeit far from perfect, encouraged the perspective that all citizens regardless of class, occupation, or place of residence, must be treated equally. Today, just as then, this is un- derstood to form social justice. Apartheid of health was considered to be intolerable. Thanks to evidence provided by medical practitioners, British bureaucrats took actions that were to culminate in the implementation of legal appa- ratus to assure improved health. Although con- cerns about public health persisted, in part due to the magnitude of problems formed by un- controlled rapid urban growth, subsequent socio-medical reports after 1848 and new hous- ing erected under sanitary legislation confirmed the benefits of public health in negating the well-being risks introduced by industrializa- tion. Health, as a basic necessity and human right, was confirmed as being fundamental to the success of any economy and society as a whole. If the legacy of Chadwick and his peers was nothing else, it was this. And all industrial societies after Britain have to be thankful to the founding of this tenet. REFERENCES 1. The Office of Population Censuses and Sur- veys. Census 1831-1841. London: HMSO; 1841.