The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-06-12 00:00:00

PUBLIC SANITARY INSPECTORS.

The third annual dinner of the above association
was held on Saturday evening at the Holborn Restau-
rant, Loudon. Mr. Edwin Chadwick, C. 8., president
of the association, occupied the chair, and arm sup-
ported, among others, by Earl Fortescue, Surgeon-
General, Sir W. Guyer Hunter, M.P., Dr. Alfred
Carpenter, J.P., Dr. Alexander Bain, Lord Rector of
Aberdeen, Mr. 11. Alexander, Mr. Buckworth, and
Mr. Samuel C. Legg, hon. sec.
After the customary loyal toasts had been given
and duly honoured,
Dr. Alfred Carpenter proposed the toa3t of the
evening, "Success to the Association of Public Sani-
tary Inspectors." He said he had had a long ex-
perience in parochial matters, and well knew the
difficulties that sanitary inspectors had to deal with.
He was exceedingly glad that they had combined
together for their mutual support and defence. Sani-
tary inspectors were a most necessary body, but their
usefulness was greatly restricted by what he might
call their laxity of ~enure. They were at present
appointed and paid by the local authorities, and he
knew how the screw was often put upon them by their
employers, when they were simply trying to do their
duty. (Hear, hear.) When engaged in sanitary
work himself, as the chairman of an inspection com-
mittee, he remembered that nothing brought so much
abuse and endeavours to injure upon him as his efforts
to remedy the mischiefs which arose in the homes of
the people. He would like to see a law enacted
taking the appointment and pay of sanitary inspectors
out of the hands of the local authorities. (Hear,
hear.)
The Chairman, in replying, said he deplored the
delay of sanitary legislation incurred by political pre-
occupations. Speaking of our normal standards of
sanitation as a guide for the future, he said the
prisons, once the chief seats of pestilence, now by
sanitation, with the means: of water carriage and
cleanliness in every cell, were the seats of the highest
health. So with the district half-time pauper schools,
where typhus fever, by which they were once dread-
fully ravaged, was now unknown. Children who
entered these schools without developed disease upon
them showed a death-rate, although they belonged to
the lowest type of humanity, less than one-third of
the death-rate amongst the children of the general
population, to whom the principle might eventually
be applied. For additional facts urban districts
should be examined and studied as normas, where the
separate system of drainage had been duly applied,
where by correct sanitation foul smells were cleared
from the houses, streets, and fields, where fresh and
undecomposed sewage was duly applied with a five-
fold production, and where the death-rate had been
reduced by one-third, and in some instances to one-
half what they previously were. To the normal re-
sults they might add the normas of the preventive,
which showed how sanitati9n had half emptied mili-
tary hospitals, which curative science, unaided by
sanitary science, kept full; the augmentation of force
and economy by the reduction of the army death-rates
by two-thirds of what they formerly were. Our im-
mediate means of economy by sanitation were now,
however, straightened by the general distress which
restricted immediate outlays, of which the economical
results were as yet little known in Parliament. Let
them by contrast look abroad at the working of the
bad economical conditions which reduced life, health,
and strength. in Italy --e2,000,000 was voted for
the relief of Naples by sanitation from the dire
visitation of the cholera, but there was
a deficit, and the Government could not
' give the money, and the deficit was due to the
enormous expenses of militarianism, to bloated arma-
ments, and to a fleet of big war ships. All this ex-
penditure in France was thrown away, because there
was at present an international morale that would
prevent the expenditure of it. The evident waste to
France by her militarianism in Algeria would have
sufficed to put all her cities and towns in a position
that in seven years would replace with a stronger and
better population all that she had lost by the secession
of Alsace and Lorrtkine. As a further example of the
wastefulness of militarianism, he said we held Bengal,
which had a population of over 65,000,000, with about
10,0Q0 British and 15,000 native troops. For holding
an equivalent population Russia had a million of
military force. Wheresoever we saw a heavily death-
rated State it was where the sanitary condition
of the population was neglected, and such States
were always troubled and insecure, and that was
the condition of Russia beyond any other
State in Europe. More human beings fell
in Spain from the recent cholera epidemic than in the
great Peninsular war, and vet, untaught by that
terrible experience, he found that they were proposing
to spend £11,000,000 on new war-ships. Germany
had paid the foremost attention to the application of
sanitary principles to her army, and since the Franco-
German war had gained by it as much life and force
as was then lost by the sword. - For ourselves sanita-
tion had gained for the Indian as well as the home
army a great extent of the relief we proposed for it.
In the Indian army we had obtained a reduction from
the old death-rate of 69 to 13 per 1000. During the
last decade, when the reduction had been got down
to 20 in the 1000, a gain of 40,000 of force first to last
had been achieved, and a gain of £6,000,0000f money.
(Cheers.)
The toast of "The Houses of Parliament" was pro-
posed by Mr. H. Alexander, and responded to byLord
Fortescue and Sir Guyer Hunter, M.P.
Other toasts followed.