The Great Filth: The War Against Disease in Victorian England

by Stephen Halliday

When Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 London was already the largest metropolis in the world with a population of nearly 2 million, but most of her subjects were still country-dwellers. By the end of the century London had grown sixfold, and 80% of Britons lived in towns or cities.

In large part the story of 19th-century England is the story of the city. Early Victorian cities struggled to manage themselves with a public infrastructure that had changed little since Elizabethan times. There was no regular income tax. The government's role in matters of sanitation, water supply or public health was barely recognised. While 15% of all children could expect to die before their first birthday, urban children were far worse off than their country cousins. Figures published in the Lancet in 1843 showed that the life expectancy of a labourer in rural Rutland was 38, while in Liverpool it was just 15.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Victorian

256 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Persephone · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is best summed up in the final three sentences of its conclusion:

When Victoria came to the throne, the average age of death of subjects fell in the late thirties. When she died in 1901, the average age of death was in the early fifties. All the people whose lives have been examined in this volume contributed to that improvement: politicians, social reformers, doctors, scientists, midwives; but especially the engineers.

As a result, this book reads rather like a series of mini-biographies, and there are a lot of them! You can tell Stephen Halliday is indeed most interested in the engineers; you can almost hear his level of excitement rising as you read through the chapter devoted to them. I, however, found the chapter on midwifery the most informative. I had a vague idea of the causes of child-bed fever and, as a family historian, was already aware of the high incidences for both infant and mother mortality. However, I was not aware that the death rate for newly-delivered mothers actually rose in the latter part of the nineteenth century due to mothers going to hospitals rather than staying at home to deliver. In the hospitals, women were tended by staff who may have just come from performing an autopsy. "Doctors are gentlemen and gentlemen's hands are clean," said a prominent doctor huffily when it was suggested that medical staff should wash their hands.

An interesting patchwork of Victorian lives touching on the topics of disease, sanitation, childbirth, and, uh, sewage.

[Sue Pit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book regards the living conditions during the Victorian era in England which encompassed an urban population explosion without accompanying satisfactory sanitation and other health measures and precautions to deal with the same. The lack of incentive, and coordination by the government which combined with the lack of scientific understanding of what caused the various sickness (e.g. airborne vs. water borne) made for dire conditions. It is generally an interesting topic if not the best written. At times there is repetition and it can bog down a bit, but over all it is an illuminating read of some serious woes in England during that era. A good background foundation too if reading Dickens (which I was).

[Liz Barr · Rating 2 out of 5]

How can you take such an interesting subject and make it so unbearably dull?

[Mark Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

It doesn’t particularly tell a story, as it concentrates on a series of pocket biographies. These individual lives are gathered together by specialism eg doctor, scientist, engineer. This biographical approach makes it a useful primer across a few topics but doesn’t make for a page turning read.
I also noted a fair bit of repetition. In the book there was a fair bit of repetition.

[Zombaby Cera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting. I'm shocked to learn that it took so long for doctors to finally start washing their hands between patients. I also found the politics involved in public health to be horrific. Glad to know that things in modern society have improved(in some cases.)

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at the men and women who fought to make England safer for the people who lived there. Halliday does look at earlier figures in an effort to show the general history of medicine and the study of disease transmission.

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it rather disturbing that the resistance to government 'interference' lasted so long in the fact of obvious benefits.

This should have been really interesting, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it.