Beneath the Surface: Social Reports as Primary Sources

Page 1 of 5

• 1. The background
• 2. Can we believe Robert Baker?
• 3. Who was interested in the information?
• 4. What can interest you?
• 5. Find out more
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The background

Edwin Chadwick, Secretary to the Poor Law Commissioners, used local investigators to provide evidence of urban public health conditions, and a doctor, Robert Baker, provided the information below about Leeds.

Leeds was typical of the rapidly growing manufacturing towns of the 19th century. Long established as market town for the sale of cloth, it exemplified all the characteristics of industrial environment, with a local government system faced with unique demands of its resources and abilities.

Of the 586 streets of Leeds, 68 only are paved by the town, ie, by the local authorities; the remainder are either paved by the owners or are partly paved, or are totally unpaved, with the surfaces broken in every direction, and ashes and filth of every description accumulated upon many of them... of the 68 streets... 19 are not sewered at all, and ten only partly so; nay it is only within the three or four years past that a sewer has been completed through the main street for two of the most populous wards...a population of 30,540 persons...Here and there stagnant water, and channels so offensive that they have been declared to be unbearable, lie under the doorways of the uncomplaining poor...

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