TC-EC [ECH], 23 March. MS: Univ. College, London. Hitherto unpbd.

1. A proof of the Report … on … the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, pbd., after revision, in July. Copies were sent to distinguished men of letters; for Mill's comments, see Mineka 13:516. Its great service was “to dispel by the hard light of its revelations the darkness of ignorance which hid from bourgeois eyes the domestic condition of the workers” (R. A. Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement 1832–54 [1952] 46). It concluded (1) that the annual mortality from filth and inadequate ventilation was greater than that resulting from wars in which the country had been engaged in modern times; (2) that the loss of working ability owing to unsanitary conditions was at least eight to ten years; (3) that epidemics and other diseases increased rather than lessened the population-pressure; and (4) that much could be done by govt. intervention and regulation to improve the lot of the workers. It was a best seller.

2. Rachel Dawson Chadwick, b. Kennedy, m. 1839, da. of John Kennedy, inventor, who was from Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire.