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5
"accumulations of noxious and offensive matter" and similar nuisances.
All the evidence makes it quite clear that dating from about the
time Mr. Dean's pamphlet on Tottenham was published there was a growing
body of opinion in the parish in favour of something being done about the
local sanitary conditions, and that it was coming to be widely recognised
that the key to improvements lay in the energetic use of statutory powers.
PUBLIC HEALTH ACT, 1848.
Considerable, it may be thought too much, time has been spent in
disentangling the threads of a mere precursory phase in the parish's sanitary
history. But without knowing something of the background it would
be impossible to understand how it came about that Tottenham got off to such a
flying start when a way was first opened for the lesser towns and parishes
of England to try their hand at sanitary administration, and so became for
nearly a decade a model for the country.
Chance and circumstance had equipped the parish well for progressiveness
in this matter. The healthiness of the place had been the bait on
which the little town had established itself as a favoured place of residence
for the well-to-do; prestige and every consideration of self interest
demanded the preservation of this reputation, Then again, the peculiar
local social structure ensured the presence of an unusually high proportion
of educated, public spirited men, requisite for putting an improving policy
into practice. Finally, as we have already seen, some fraction of the
inhabitants had been "tuning in" so to speak to the sanitary idea for a
number of years. So that in 1848, when the opportunity came, the parish's
sanitary aspirations were formed and ripe for development.
Up to this time effective, and that implied statutory, sanitary
measures had been within the reach of only the largest and wealthiest
towns. For there was no public and general sanitary act which a town
might adopt and the costliness of the alternative, namely the procuring
of a local improvement act - which was how the Liverpools and Manchesters
first procured sanitary powers - was prohibitive for a small town.
With the coming into force of the Public Health Act in 1848 an easy
and cheap way of obtaining local sanitary powers was open to any place,
no matter how small By the Act, a board of health could be set up locally
and empowered to take up the management of sewers and drains, the provision
of water supplies, the inspection of slaughter houses, the paving of streets
and a host of similar hitherto neglected functions: and to levy a rate for
these services- The procedure was simple. "Upon the petition of not
less than one tenth of the inhabitants rated to the relief of the poor in
any place," the General Board of Health (the central department created
by the Act for public health purposes) would send one of its superintendent
inspectors to hold a public inquiry into the relevant local circumstances,
If all went well for the petitioners an order in council would follow,