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Poverty, Public Health and the State in Britain, c1780–1939

Changing attitudes to public health

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

Recall questions on attitudes in 1780 and the arguments against intervention, the Dirty Party, the press, the Great Stink, germ theory, and national efficiency.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Who were the Dirty Party?

Who and when

How did the press contribute to changing attitudes?

Numbers

What was the Great Stink?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How did opinion among the public, the papers and members shift?

    Model answer

    They shifted gradually from laissez-faire reluctance to interfere towards growing acceptance that the state must intervene to protect public health.

  2. 2

    What was the prevailing attitude to state intervention in 1780?

    Model answer

    That public health was a local and private matter, and that interference with property rights and free trade was both wrong and unnecessary.

  3. 3

    What arguments were used against public health legislation?

    Model answer

    That it infringed property rights, cost ratepayers money, created centralised bureaucracy, and interfered with individual liberty.

  4. 4

    Who were the Dirty Party?

    Model answer

    The ratepayers, water companies and property owners who opposed compulsory sanitary measures on grounds of cost and local self-government.

  5. 5

    How did the press contribute to changing attitudes?

    Model answer

    The Times, Punch and later the illustrated papers publicised slum conditions and epidemics, and Punch's cartoons made filth a national scandal.

  6. 6

    What was the Great Stink?

    Model answer

    The summer of 1858, when the smell of the untreated Thames drove parliament to act, funding Bazalgette's sewers within eighteen days.

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AThe government admitted 96 dead and 333 wounded.
BOther estimates run to several hundred dead.
COpponents claimed thousands.

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