The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-11 00:00:00

PRICE OF SUGAR.

The average price of Brown or Muscovado Sugar, computed
from the returns made in the week ending_ February 8,
1848, is 265. C:l4 d. per cwt.

DINNER TO PROFESSOR STAIE.—On Friday a
puLlic dinner was given in the Waterloo Remus to Mr.
Sy vac, professor of clinical surgery in the Universi!y of
Edinburgh, on the occasion of his removal to London to
fill a similar chair in connexion with the Univi rsity
College. Upwards of a hundred gentlemen sat down to
dinner, consisting of the leading medical practitioners in
Edinburgh and throughout the country. The chair was
occupied by Professor Christison, pre,ident of the Rojal
College ut burgeons.—Scotsman.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
DOUSE OF COMMOAS,Fcb. 10.
The Telarquis of KILDARE took the oaths and his
seat for the county of Kildare.
HIGHWAYS.
Mr. OSBORNE asked if any measure was to be
brought in on the subject of highways.
Sir G. GREY said such a measure was in preparation.
PUBLIC lIE aLTII.
Viscount MORPETH then rose to move for leave to
bring in a Bill for promoting the public health. Ills
Lordship said that in rising to move this Bill !or e
second time, he certainly felt no diminution of the
anxiety and earnestness which attended his first c ifort,
and he hoped he might say his last failure on the sub-
ject. Ile did not feel himself called on to enter into the
subject of the proceedings which ended in that eel. at.
%VILA then imbed, however, had left two feelings
most iu his mind; one, of his increased respensiuility,
that there should be no second failure; t:.e other, that
whilst last time a great deal was said and nothing
done, so this time comparatively little might be said,
aid a great deal might be effected. It might be
remembered that in the proceedings last year
two injunctions were given to him—one to set forth
in the Bid all that it was proposed to enact; the other,
to bring in a Bill containing only Leo or three clauses.
These injunctions were opposed to each o. her,
and having to choose between them, he hed decided
to comply with the first. Aiming at as much concise-
ness and brevity as were attainable with the efficiency
of the measure—discarding many adjuncts which they
would have been glad to have included—they had sought
in the first Bill to lay the basis of an efficient measure
of sanitary re:orm. Perhaps he could not better state
the objects which such a measure should aim at than by
quoting from the petition of the working classes, pre
rented last session, in favour of the Health of Toe ns
Bill. These were the classes, be it remembered, for
whom they had to legislate. If health eluded the rich
man in one place, he might pursue it in another ; but it
the Parliament did not provide health for the poor they
were quite unable to provide it for themselves. The
petitioners he referred to prayed for seven things : for
better water—better sewers—the removal of nuisances—
the improvements of the dwellings of the poor—their
better ventilation—the erection of public baths and
washhouses—and the construction of gymnasia and pub-
lic places of amusement. He would now proceed to state
what the Bill itself proposed. They abided by their
proposition to form a general board of health, consisting
of five members, of whom two should be paid, and of
whom the president should be personally responsible to
Parliament. He was aware that this proposition would
not meet the views of those who were specially impressed
with the inconvenience of what they styled centralka
tion; but he was fully convinced himself that without
some regulating central power, the Act could never
practically be carried out. And he had reason to think
that public opinion coincided with this view, and that
there was a general conviction that when duties were
thrown on irresponsible local bodies, they would rarely
be found to fulfil those duties satisfactorily. There-
fore, whilst he should leave the working to local
bodies representing those who were mainly inter-
ested, ho considered it right that there should be a
general board to provide indispensable preliminaries,
to suggest plans, to check abuses, and to exercise
a superintending control. This brought him to state
what the constitution of the local board should bs,
and on that point they also adhered to the opinions ex-
pressed last year, that these local bodies should be more
or less connected with the town councils of the different
boroughs. Two objections were raised to that—first,
that the machinery was cumbrous ; and, second, that the
boundaries of boroughs were not well defined. They
proposed to meet the first objection by providing that
after e. certain number of householders had applied fot
the operation of the Act, and after the report of compe-
tent inspectors, then the order in Council issued by the
Executive Board should define the number of which the
local board should be composed, and that the town
council should choose that number from among their own
body. With respect to the question of boundary, they
proposed that the same order in Council should prescribe
the number of sanitary officers to act for the outlying
districts, to be chosen from among the guardians of the
poor. Towns and places where no town council existed
would be subject to a similar arrangement. With
regard to the limits of their operations, they proposed
to make no exception in England and Wales with.
respect to the operation f the Act ; and hereafter, it
the Bill was found to act well, they would hope to ex tt rul
it to Scotland and Ireland. He had said they did not
exclude any part of England and Wales, and thererore
the Haase would understand that the Bill did not pro
fessedly exempt the metropolis.—(Hear, hear.) Ho did
not wish to mislead the House. They had appointed a
commission specially to report upon the measures re-
quired by the metropolis upon this subject, and he
should.boce to bring in a Bill specially applicable to it,
for Owing to the great extent of London, its large popu-
laden, and the number of interests involved, he must,
candidly say that he elid not contemplate that it would
be easy, until the supplementary Bill was ready, to apply'
the. provisions of this measure to the metropolis. He
now came to the question of the dudes the local com-
missioners would have to perform. There would of course
be some localities in which certain measures would be
more expedient than others; but the citifies which the
local boards would have to conduct would be these:—
They would be bound to have regular meetings, to
appoint an inspector of nuisances, to prepare a map of
their localities, to require house-drains to be made, to
cleanse and water the public streets, to fill np or cover
in ditches, to keep a register of :slaughter-houses and
lodging-houses, and to provide sufficient water for
general use. They would have permissive powers to
cover sewers, alter privies, &c., whitewash and purify
houses, provide buildings to be used as slaughter-
houses, alter public buildings improperly built, super-
vise their ventilation, provide public walks, and pur-
chase and maintain waterworks. These objects, of
course, must be carried into effect by means of rating.
The rating clauses will be of the simplest construction,
and would admit of the rates being levied on the districts
specially to be benefited. He did not like to commit him-
self to the question of cost, but it had been estimated
that all the neeessary sanitary provisions could be de-
frayed at a rate of not more than 4d. a week per house.
He did not mean to include any clause respecting ceme-
teries in the Bill, but it would enact that whenever the
Board of Health found a churchyard over-crowded they
might have power to prohibit its use.—(Hear, hear.)
With regard to the subject of ventilation, that had been
put under the superintendence of a special board, and
consequently, would not be comprised within the limits
of the proposed Bill. Such were the main outlives of
the measure which he proposed to lay before the House;
but he could not conclude without endeavouring to im-
press on the nous!, some of the grounds which, in his
opinion, rendered it absolutely imperative that the pre-
sent, or some other equivalent measure, should be
adopted without delay. Amongst those grounds he did not
mean to lay much stress on the cholera. It that dreaded
malady should arrive, the Government had already
adopted all the precautions that could be devised. It
might prove only a temporary visitation, and as such be
met by temporary remedies, and in so tar the Govern-
' ment had already done something by reviving the
Cholera Act of 1832, which would admit of the speedy
re-establishment of local boards of health, if they should
be required. But what he more immediately sought to
impress on the House was the fact, that they were not
now called upon to provide temporary remedies against
temporary evils, but against abiding evils of a vast ex
tent, evils which were the permanent causes of by far the
larger proportion of noisome ills that infested the popu-
lations of towns and cities, and which exceeded in their
fatal ravages the bloodiest slaughter ever witnessed in
the battle-field.—(Hear, hear.) Ho was not about to
trouble the House with any unnecessary quotations from
those statistical proofs which right-minded men had
deemed it expedient to bring forward in defence and
illustration of sanitary reform. There might have been
errors in some of those estimates formed by enthusiastic
inquirers, and in the deductions which they made &ere
them, but even making a liberal allowance for those ex-
aggerations, there remained sufficient to appal, as vi ell
as to rouse, the House to exertion. One writer in a
medical review thus states his views:—
" The conclusions to which our examination en' sani-
tary tests and estimates bas led us Are the following :

1. That the advocates of sanitary reform are justified in
assundeg two per cent. as the rate to which the mor-
tality of all towns, and a fortiori of the country a
large, may, by proper sanitary measures, be reduced.
2. That there are fair grounds for assuming for the
who!e of the population a still more favourable rate of
mortality. 3. That the estimated annual sacrifice of
35,000 lives in England and Wales, and of upwards of
60,000 in the United Kingdom, is not greatly exag-
gerated ; and that a more moderate estimate of
30,000 for England and Wales, and 51,000 fur the
United Kingdom, may be very safely assumed. 4. That
the estimated amount of sickness, like the estimated
waste of life, expressed in yeas, has been somewhat-
exaggerated by the advocates of sanitary reform ; that
twenty cases of unnecessary sickness to one unnecessary
death, is a safer proportion to assume than twenty-
eight to one ; and that the total cases of unnecessary
sickness will have to be 'educed accordingly."
The reviewer then goes on to say:—
" The annual waste of life and sacrifice of health
reduced to equivalents in pounds, shillings, and pence,
under the heads of sickness, funerals, and labcur lost,
is represented by a grand total for England and Wales
of 14,873,9311., or little less than 15,000,000/. sterling.
Of this eneraaotie total the metropolis contributes very
nearly 2,000,00f'/., and Lancashire upwards of 4,000,0001.
The standards of cornpara3on employed in these calcu-
lations are the rate of mortality and average age at
death in the .most lnatithy registration district of each
county; the ages of the living being disregarded, and
the rates of sickness to death being taken at 1 to 28.
If this essential element ci age had been taken into
account, if the more moderate standard of two per cent.
had been substituted for the perhaps too favourable
mortality of the most healthy district, and if the ratio
of 1 to 28 between deaths and cases of sickness had
been made to suffer some abatement, it is not impossible
that these 15,000..00e/. might be reduced lb considerably
lees than half. l'essdAy the total waste of money might
not exceed the sum annually raised in the shape of poor
rates."

Discarding the higher figuros of these computations,
and taking them even at one-half, he would still be jus-
tified in asserting it as a troth, that there were annually
30,000 lives sacritied which might be saved, and from
7,000,000/. to 8,000,0001. of unnecessary outlay, which, if
not avoid' d in future, would be attributable less to the
folly of the L.2gislaturo than io its criminality. In a
eubacquent par:of the same mien-, the writer thus pro-
ccees!--

"The calculations published in the tables of the Health
of Towns Association embrace only three hearts—fune-
rals, sickness, and labour wasted. Orphanage and
widowhood, which impose a perpetual burden upon the
poor-lams of about 50 000 women and children, and an
annual burden, which, though not yet ascertained, can-
not but be considerable, are not taken into the account.
Then there is another a normous item of waste or mis-
appropriation of money, not c. ntained in these tables—
nem( ly, the sums squandered in the shape of defective
and costly structural arrangements above and below
ground. What all these barbarisms have cost and are
costing ur, it would be difficult to say ; but that they
amount to several millions a year no reasonable man can
doubt. We refer our readers to the reports of the Health of
Towns Commission, and the Publication of the Health of
Towns Association, for particulars. If they appear ex-
aggerated, let tliem halve or quarter every item, and
there will still remain the mr,st remarkable rapo.se ever
3ct made of municipal and national extravagance. One
broad principle may be safely enunciated in respect of
sanitary economics—that it costs more money to create
disease than to prevent it; and that there is not a single
structural arrangement chargeable with the production
of disease which is not also in itself an extravagance."
The return of the Registrar-General of the kingdom, for
the quarter ending Dumb, r 31 last, had just been
presented, and in it he found the following statement:—
"The quarterly returns aro obtained from 117 dis-
tricts, subdivided into 582 sub-districts. 36 districts
are in the metropolis, and the remaining 81 comprise,
with some agricultural districts, 'the principal towns
and cities of England. The population was 6,612,800 in
1841. 57,925 deaths were registered in the last quarter.
The average nuwb'r of deaths deduced from the returns
of the corresponding quarter of nine preceding years,
and corrected for increase of population, is 46,509.
There is, consequently, an excess of 11,376 deaths in
the quarter. The deaths registered in the December
quarters of 1845, 1846, and 1847. are 39,291-
53.093-57,925; the mortality in the first is to that
of the last quarter nearly as 2 to 3. A slight increase in
the mortality was noted in the returns of the June quar-
ter, 1846; the mortality in the following hot summer,
when the potato crap failed, was excessive. Cholera
and diarrhoea prevailed epidemically. In the autumn of
1846, as well as the winter and sprines quarters of 1847,
the mortality was still higher. Scurvy prevailed in the
beginning of the year, but in the summer the publio
health appeared to be slightly improved. Epidemics of
typhus arid influenza, however, set in, and have made the
mortality in the last quarter of 1847, higher than in any
quarter of any year since the new system of registration
commenced. About 16,000 a year, multiplied by 10, the
recoveries to each death, a calculation lower by 18 than
Dr. Playf'air, we have yearly in England above 160,000
attacks of this loathsome disease which may be pre-
vented—a disease which does more to pauperise our po-
pulation, to till our workhouses with widows and orphans
than any other, and for this reason—the typhus fever
for the most part attacks men and women in the prime
of life—from twenty to forty. This is the age at which
the members of the working classes marry; and if the
father of a family is cut off, the widow and her children
are cast for support on the poor-rates. This is a painful
ease of pauperism, and it becomes more so from its per-
manence. A widow so left with children is seldom mar-
ried a second time. From the books of the unions it
appears to take place only in one case out of thirty.
No wonder, then, the poor-law unions have to support
40,000 wirlows and 100,000 orphans year after year.'
The evidence afforded by the medical statistics, that
typhus was a result of causes that could with certainty
be prevented, was overwhelming and conclusive. Dr.
Hall, of Preston, speaking of the sanitary condition of
tho town, said—

" The deaths of infants in Preston, stated by Dr.
Hall, under one year, were—well-conditioned streets, 15
deaths to leo births ; middling-conditioned streets, 21
deaths to 100 births ; ill-conditioned streets, 38 deaths
to 100 births ; worst-conditioned streets, 44 deaths to
100 births. We see, then, and the remark holds good
not only in Pr;ston, but also In other towns, that the
mortality is in proportion to the condition of the houses
in which the children lire and the streets in which they
am situate, no less than 29 per cent. more of deaths
taking place in the worst than in the beat conditioned
streets of Preston, the mortality being 15 and 44 per
cent."

The condition of Leicester and of Nottingham was ex-
emplified in the following manner :
" In the parish of St. Margaret, Leicester, the average
age at death in 1840 was—well-drained streets, 23i ;
partially drained streets, 17f ; and streets without
drains, 13. i."
" MORTALITY OF NOTTINGHAM.

Ward. Deaths to each 100.
( Byrne's Ward
Worst St. Ann's IVard lin 36
( St. liars', Wnrd
Castle Ward
Best Sherwood Ward.
Park Ward
What he (Lord Morpeth) wanted to show was, that
death daily occurred from causes that the Legislature
could remove. Very recently he had seen a statement
in .one of the papers, which he would read to the
Elousc:—

" A long investigation recently took place before Mr.
Baker, at the Windmill, Rosemary-lane, on view of the
body of Mary White, aged two -years. The inquiry
was instituted by the medical officer of the White-
chapel Union, in consequence of the many deaths whfch
have taken place from a similar cause. Ann Briant,
a married woman, said she bad lived in Hayes-
court about a week ; during that period there,,was
scarcely a house in which some one was not ill of fever.
The child, her mother said, had been labouring under a
fever for two months. Witness for the last week as-
sisted the mother to attend the chili. It died on Tues-
day. Witness had no doubt that its death was caused
by the impure atmosphere of the coast. Several of the
jury observed that the witness seemed to be in a state of
lever, and Mr. Webb, the summoning officer, said that
the whole of the inhabitants of the court had the same
appearance. Mr. John Ltddle, surgeon of Whitechapel
Union, said that he was first called to see the deceased
on the 20th of August, in compliance with an order. It
was then suffering from fever and diarrhoea. The
parent would not let him go into the room, alleging that
it was offensive and dangerous, and the mother brought
the child to him at the next house. He prescribed for
it, but the medicines would not act as they would have
done in a healthy atmosphere. Witness has now six
patients in that court. The first witness stated that she
knew two children in another house, one of wham was
dying of the fever, another was very bad.—Coroner
(to the surgeon)—Do you register this a natural death?
Mr. Liddle—No; a death from the poisonous effluvia
of the atmosphere from the want of drainage. It
has been proved that the gas, in its pure state,
ari4ing front the decomposition of animal matter, is
fatal; and M. Thenard, a French chemist, has found
that 1.800 of its volume will destroy a dog, and 1 volume
in 230 is sufficient to destroy a horse. Some course
ought to be adopted, as the whole neighbourhood was
liable to be attacked with fever. The jury returned the
following verdict:—' That the deceased died from
diarrhoea and fever, caused by the noxious and poisonous
effluvium in Hayes-court from want of drainage.' "
Mr. Roche, surgeon to the Lying-in Hospital, Liver-
pool, gives the following account to the editor of the
Journal of Public health, of a case which had come
under his notice:—

" On the 28th of September, 1846, I was requested
to visit a young man residing at Hardwick-terrace,
Prescot-street. I found him suffering from a severe at-
tack of dysentery; and teas not many minutes in the
house when the smell all through the lower part of it
became most offensive, arising from the privy and cess-
pool, which were situated about four feet from the ball.
On making inquiry, I was informed that whenever any-
thing was thrown into it the stench was scarcely to be
endured through the house, even to ;he upper rooms. One
disaster after another occurred in this family; the father
and two younger children were attacked with dysen-
tery, the mother (who was near her confinement) soon
became a prey to the same disease ; and then, to crown
the sad catastrophe, the two eldest children were seized
with typhus fever, and the father's case took on typhoid
symptoms. Here, then, were seven human beings placed
in jeopardy by a most unwarrantable nuisance ; and it
is to be feared that this is only one instance among
many in this town. The mother and youngest child
with the infiv.t died ; all the others were spared, but
their recoveries were very tedious, until I had them re-
moved to another house in the neighbourhood, when in
twenty-four Lours the change in the father's case wasmost remarkable, and all the children got rapidly better,
but the pecuniary resources of the family were entirely