3 - The urban environment and the M.O.H.'s authority

Summary

HOUSEHOLDS AND DRAINS

The annual reports of the local medical officers of health and sanitary inspectors reveal a clear picture of slowly improving sanitary conditions. One must admire, and wonder at, the energy and determination of these officials who, in the face of great hostility from all sides (landlords, tenants, slum-owning vestrymen and ratepayers), went about their task with such grim enthusiasm. The number of annual inspections conducted by the local authorities was remarkable, a testimony to Victorian energy.

The greatest success of late Victorian health departments may well have been in the most mundane matters, the enforcing of minimum standards of sanitation in homes, certain businesses, and public spaces. This work was conducted through the periodic visits of Inspectors of Nuisances or Sanitary Inspectors, who came, sometimes unannounced, to see that sanitary regulations were being observed. No other part of the Sanitary Department's work occupied so much staff time. When Newsholme arrived in Brighton, there were more than 20,000 occupied houses in the area of the Sanitary Department's jurisdiction. By the time he left in 1908, that number was nearly 24,000. Early in his career his Department thus had one inspector for every 2,222 inhabited houses. In the middle 1890s this ratio would have placed Brighton about on the middle of the scale of London boroughs, between the Strand at one extreme with one inspector for every 358 inhabited houses and Lambeth at the other with one inspector for every 4,819 inhabited houses.