The Campaign for Change

Middle Class Pursuit for Sanitary Reform in Victorian England

Logan Matthews, '25

Issue: 2

“Portions of the population, in such a deplorable state of ignorance as that manifested, even in this country, at the time of the invasion of cholera.”1 A leader in the perusal of Sanitary Reform in nineteenth-century London, Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Conditions of The Labouring Population of Great Britain addresses that, although cholera swept through Great Britain in several epidemics throughout the nineteenth century, there were still large pockets of the population remained ignorant and resistant to the disease. As the London population was repetitively overrun with cholera, both the upper and the lower class’s biases and preoccupations fostered indifference to the necessary reforms that needed to happen in London. The Thames, the river that ran through the center of London with dense populations alongside it, was contaminated by the sewage and filth of London’s rapidly increasing population. The working class dismissed the Thames’ contamination as just another poor working condition, choosing to address conditions that to them felt more dire, while the upper class considered the filth a poor man's problem that was below them morally. Only the middle class consistently pushed for sanitary reform. Therefore, they needed to devise as many arguments for its necessity as they could in order to reach each portion of the population that remained ignorant, as Chadwick had expressed. In order to successfully campaign for sanitary reforms in cholera-ridden London, the nineteenth-century middle class used a combination of tools—purity, cleanliness, safety, and empiricism—in their artwork to tailor their arguments to address various anti-reform perspectives within the upper and working class.

Eighteenth-century Britain was able to be on the forefront of the Industrial Revolution because of its abundance of coal and innovation permitting government. Although this allowed Britain to reinstate itself as a central power in Europe, the condition of British cities severely decreased because of industrialization.2 Before industrialism, a primary power source for production was the water wheel. The water wheel took advantage of the natural movement of water to aid manufacturing of various British goods, especially textiles. Because of this, in the eighteenth century, many businesses set up their centers of production along the river Thames, considering it was both a rapidly running river and ran right through the center of London. With industrialization came factories reliant on coal and steam power, and the companies that had established themselves along the river because of the water wheel changed to more steam and coal-based production. They already had land along the river, so steam access would be easier, and now they had a natural dispensary for used resources that would send any byproduct of their production out of sight down the river.3 By the time the lasting issues of disposing waste into naturally running water became apparent, too many British factories were reliant on the Thames to adjust their method of production and waste removal, aiding the beginnings, and continuation, of the contamination of the river Thames.

Another byproduct of the Industrial Revolution seen in Britain was a rapid increase in urban populations, primarily of the working class and centralized around the large employers. Industrialism and urbanization marked a permanent shift in the primary locations and employment of the working class. In the centuries prior, a majority of the working population worked on the land, farming resources and harvesting raw goods because that was the “dirty work” that was necessary. Most of their food was traded or self gathered, and resources were limited to what was directly accessible. As factory based manufacturing became a standard, goods were significantly more accessible to the working class. Because of this ease of access, nutrition of the working class and caloric intake increased dramatically, leading to an uptick in birth rates.4 Additionally, as London became increasingly more of an urban center, immigration to London grew, adding to its already growing population.5

Although population growth is not directly correlated to filth and health, in London’s case, it was the leading factor. London had dated infrastructure, especially when it came to sewage and waste removal. The standard as London came into the nineteenth century was cesspools, which were holes dug into the ground where citizens would pour their waste and then cover up. These cesspools were occasionally emptied out by nightmen, but as the population increased, the cesspools were no longer practical. Because of this, upper class citizens began to illegally dump their waste into the London sewers, which differed greatly from modern day sewers. The London sewage system, which emptied into the river Thames, was originally built to transport water and rainwater to prevent flooding in the city. As cesspools became more and more inconvenient and reformers began to address the sanitary concerns of living beside human waste in dense populations, sewers being used as disposal sources for human waste became the standard for the entirety of London. The companies that regulated the sewers would simply charge a fee to construct a drainage pipe in a house or neighborhood to drain into the sewer and flow to the river, and by the 1820s, the river Thames now also had to withstand the majority of London’s human waste alongside the factory wastes.6

In 1810, over 3000 salmon were caught and brought to market from the Thames; in 1833, the last salmon in the Thames was found.7 The poor condition of the Thames water was able to entirely destroy an abundant population of salmon, and it slowly began to have the same effect on the people of London, too. From 1831 to 1866, four cholera pandemics swept through London. Although cholera was present in Asiatic countries like China and India in previous years, it was new to Britain in the nineteenth century. Cholera, as a disease, dehydrates the infected through frequent diarrhea and vomiting. Although scientific progress has shown that cholera is a solely waterborne illness, England did not know its cause at that time and ignored the evidence that pointed toward this fact. Consequently, in order to medicate the cholera, English doctors would encourage patients to drink as much water as possible, even though the water was what infected them in the first place.8 Although Europe, and Britain, had seen worse illnesses sweep through its cities in the past, cholera was particularly alarming because it would infect large pockets of the population so rapidly, at a seemingly random rate. Cholera itself was a notably jarring illness, since a frequent result of the severe dehydration was sludgy blood that led to rupturing of blood vessels, and the infected skin morphing into an inhuman blue hue. All of these symptoms could happen within hours of the first indication of the illness. These horrifying symptoms led to cholera being commonly referred to as “The Blue Death.”9

Before exploring the arguments the middle class used to persuade the entirety of London’s population on the necessity for sanitary reform, it must first be understood why any citizen would be reluctant, dismissing, or against change in light of such a brutal illness. The working class suffered the largest impacts from the cholera outbreaks, living closest to the river and in dense unsanitary pockets. Regardless, the working class was oftentimes against sanitary reform. Because they were the most impacted by the filth of London, the suggestion that the disease could be waterborne and that fixing the London sewers would help seemed unrelated to the real problem. To the working class, because they were the most affected, the only natural cause of the disease was a product of the working conditions, rights, and materials of the working class.10 Although often portrayed as ignorant of the issue entirely, the working class would fight for issues revolving around the cholera outbreaks, but because their working conditions were so poor, they needed to focus on those before they started to directly address speculative other sanitary practices, like the emerging theory that cholera was waterborne. Therefore, the middle class did not need to convince the working class that there was an issue and instead needed to persuade the working class that this issue was more pressing than others.

Not only was reform taking different shapes with the working class, but they were also the most impacted by the continuation of cesspools, so therefore were originally most in support of draining sewage into the dated London sewers. Cesspools were typically located near lower class communities, and the career of nightmen, whose job it was to drain their neighbors’ waste, was not desired by anyone in London. Because of this, the move to sewers was, at least on the surface, very beneficial for the lower class, so early reformers suggesting the potential pitfalls of the sewers were largely ignored by the lower class.11 The few groups at the forefront of campaigning for change that are considered “working class” were also led by middle class reformers, and the majority of its members were in the middle class and followed Chadwickian philosophies, based on middle class Edwin Chadwick’s proposals.12 So, although they may have presented themselves as “working class,” these committees and groups were primarily middle class.

Unlike the working class, the upper class was directly outspoken against the sanitary reform. The lead contributor to upper class reluctance to accept the need for sanitary reform was the belief in the miasma theory and obstinance in considering alternative theories on how illness is transferred. Up until the nineteenth century, the majority of British citizens, especially upper class citizens, firmly believed that illness and contagion traveled through the air, and specifically through scents, which is known as the miasma theory. Germ theory had not yet been conceived, so with the majority of plagues coming with a potent scent of death and other foul odors, the miasma theory was a natural conclusion.13 Because of this, both cesspools and sewers seemed to inconvenience the upper class in many ways because drainage pipes allowed for scents to travel up into their houses and infect them from within their own homes.

Additionally, Victorian England had a strong association between filth, illness, immorality, and poverty. Because of a combination of religious and elite reasoning, the upper class oftentimes blamed the outbreaks on the misdoings of the lower class, and thought of themselves as innocent bystanders. Not only did they place blame on the lower class, they considered the relationship between illness and immorality a sort of positive feedback loop, where not only would immorality cause illness, but the illness (and scents) could cause immorality too. Therefore, the idea of sewers and drainage pipes meant that the upper class would have illness and immorality from the lower class slowly seeping into their house and infecting them. The upper class feared being connected to the working class through sewers more than they feared the looming threat of illness.14

Lastly, both the upper and lower class, in light of the now thriving mentality of liberalism in the nineteenth century, believed they had an entitlement to personal autonomy. The idea of the government attempting to control the citizens' independent lives was a constant fear in Britain throughout its history, so the concept of something as personal as one’s own waste being closely regulated by the government was alarming to all classes within Britain. Pandemic or not, they saw it as some sort of attack on their daily lives and feared that the government attempting to control sewage was just a stepping stone into regulating the rest of a citizen's personal liberties.15 Sanitary concerns affected how people interacted with others, how people disposed of their waste, and what people ate and drank, so the British citizens often would go as far as to compare sanitary reform and regulation to emerging ideas of communism in Eastern Europe.16

As discussed above, both the upper and lower class had an elaborate web of issues surrounding developments in the sanitary reform, oftentimes contradicting each other’s arguments, so in order to successfully campaign for the need for change, the middle class needed to use various reasonings of evidence in order to successfully convince all anti-reform reasoning that the sanitary reform was necessary and not harmful to the state of London. The method in which they combined all of those arguments was the use of art, both through political cartoons and more romantic styles of painting to convey the need for sanitary reform and the consequences of the current state of London and the Thames. The way in which the upper and lower class consumed art varied widely, for in the Victorian era most art was still considered an upper class pursuit. Therefore, the majority of art presented in order to persuade the lower class took shape through political cartoons in satirical magazines such as the Punch.17

First published in 1841, Punch quickly became one of London’s leading satirical magazines. Although often searching for a punchline, the messages behind Punch’s articles were still serious and often were able to criticize Britain more successfully than more established non-satirical magazines. A Punch article usually consisted of a drawing, occasionally with some speech bubbles, expressing the message of the article primarily through images and caricatures. These drawings were always accompanied by text below describing the image in detail so that even if the simplified drawings had symbolism that flew over the general audience's head, the meaning could still be determined.18 Not only was each drawing thoroughly explained, but writers and artists made sure to use accessible language so that those without an education could still understand the content. Other magazines had a history of using Greek and Latin at times in order to develop their point, but Punch, as a magazine for the general people, strayed away from that tactic, therefore it can be assumed that a majority of Punch content was intended for working class consumption.19

Before later findings of Dr. John Snow, Punch was the first major suggestion of the association between water contamination and illness. Punch used grotesque exaggerations of water content in order to scare working class readers of the potential threats that the current condition of the Thames posed. In A Drop of Thames Water, a political cartoon issued in 1850 after the second major cholera outbreak in London, an exaggerated closeup of Thames water is drawn. (See Appendix A) In this cartoon, the unnamed artist crams countless monsters and creatures into a small drop of water. These all take different forms, some resembling reptiles, some as deformed humanoid creatures, some as rats, and various others taking jarring and disgusting shapes of their own. The presence of humanoid imagery (sometimes whole, sometimes just lone severed body parts) establishes that the fears surrounding the Thames water were not just limited to filth, and was directly related to the human waste within the water. Only one word is featured within this drawing, and it is “Pestilence” spelled out with worms. Just in case the plethora of off putting creatures was not enough for the viewer to understand that the cartoonist believed that the Thames water was full of filth and disease, they made sure to include exact wording to guide the viewer. There was no attempt to confuse Punch viewers in this cartoon; it aimed to graphically scare and warn of the filth and disease London citizens were drinking daily.20

Appendix A

A Drop of Thames Water, or an exaggerated demonstration of the filth of the River Thames in 1850. Issued by the satirical English magazine Punch in order to call attention to the potential deficits of the state of the Thames.

[Punch Magazine, "A Drop of Thames Water," cartoon, Punch, May 11, 1850.]

Zooming out, Punch also often conveyed the entirety of the river Thames as filthy and contaminated. A frequent caricature in Punch illustrations, Father Thames was the personification of the River Thames, and was used as a more direct demonstration of the poor state of the Thames. London was built along the River Thames, and up until the industrial revolution, the river was London’s centerpiece. As the condition worsened, the expression of Father Thames as a more ragged, filthy man was more and more common.21 (See Appendix B) Depicting Father Thames, a sort of male counterpart to mother nature, as filthy, smelly, and poor, was the middle class saying to anyone who viewed the Punch that what was London’s centerpiece is now a festering, filthy, inherently immoral occupant of the City.22

Appendix B

[William Newman, "Dirty Father Thames," cartoon, Punch 14/15 (October 7, 1848).]

Appendix B

Punch, "The London Bathing Season," cartoon, Punch 36-37 (June 18, 1859).

In both The London Bathing Season and Dirty Father Thames, Father Thames is depicted as a sort of sea creature arising from the river. He is surrounded by dead animals, a sign of misfortune and illness. Specifically, in The London Bathing Season, he is pestering the locals around the river. Dirty Father Thames is even accompanied by a short poem, expressing just how dire the conditions of the river are becoming, and after posing several questions regarding the threat of the Thames, the poem ends with the line “Does he not, my good LORD MAYOR?”23 Here, alongside the poor representation of the river and elaborate discussion of the effects, Newman speaks directly to the mayor of London, showing that this was not just a single cartoon to rouse the public and actually a direct call to action. These depictions of the Thames consistently were used both for demonstrations to the public about the changing condition of the river Thames and as a method to speak to higher up citizens of London calling for change.24

Although the Punch was a largely satirical magazine primarily using more amateur and accessible artistic choices and symbolism, that did not stop them from using more common upper class symbols of purity and health to reflect the condition of the Thames. The upper class often used women as symbols of innocence and health, so if the Punch writers and editors knew if they could successfully demonstrate women as being affected by the condition of the Thames, upper class readers could begin to understand the health threats of the Thames.25 In Father Thames Introducing his Offspring to the Fair City of London, Punch writers use the previously discussed symbol of Father Thames as filth to show him presenting gifts to a fair lady of London. (See Appendix C). The “gifts” Father Thames presents to London, represented by a woman dressed in white, are three children equally as filthy as him, named Diphtheria, Scrofula, and Cholera. All of these were diseases infecting London at the time because of the crisis of the river.26 By depicting a filthy Father Thames handing his infected offspring to an innocent, pure, woman representing London, the Punch can suggest further effects of the filth to the upper class. This was another tactic they used to reach even more audiences.

Appendix C

[Punch, "Father Thames Introducing His Offspring to the Fair City of London," cartoon, Punch 34 (July 3, 1858): 5.]

The use of disease’s effect on women in order to petition for change was not used solely in political cartoons. More professional middle class painters also demonstrated how the illness could reach women too. In John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s Thoughts of the Past, he shows a woman being affected morally by the River Thames, seen right outside her window.27 (See Appendix D). The lone female subject is seen somberly standing in her riverside home, with both the Thames and Waterloo Bridge seen outside her window. The Waterloo Bridge, in specific, is significant because it was commonly used as a method of suicide for young women after its construction in 1819.28 Because of the common artistic association between purple wardrobes, men's clothing and items scattered about, and red hair with prostitution, it is largely believed that this woman is a prostitute herself.29 Therefore, this painting attempts to show two drastic effects of the filth of the river through the female subject: prostitution and suicide. Both of these were draped under the label of immorality and considered a byproduct of filth in London.30 Although art by Stanhope was not commonly consumed by the lower class, he was established enough where this art was able to reach the upper class, sending his message of the deficits of disease and filth in the River Thames to those in power in London.31

Appendix D

[John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past, 1859, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London, England.]

Middle class advocates for sanitary reform did not limit themselves to artistic symbols in their campaigning for change. Some, such as Thomas Pridgin Teale (who at the time of writing his book was middle class), used what was assumed to be scientific analysis of gas and illness to convey the poor condition of the London sewers.32 Once the old London sewer system was adopted, the continuation of the miasma theory struck even more fear in upper class London citizens. This was because everyone was now encouraged to install a drainage system within their own home to the sewers, which was believed to also allow for gasses to travel up into the home of the rich and infect them with the filth and diseases of the sewage, specifically the sewage from the poor communities who also used the sewers.33 In his book Dangers to Health: A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects, he includes several pictures speculating how gas would travel in and around the house through the drainage pipe. Notably, he includes an image of gas traveling out of the washroom and into a wife's bedroom. This continues the use of fear through the impact on women’s innocence by the diseases within the sewage.34 (See Appendix E) Teale takes a more scientific, objective approach with his artistic campaigning, trying to appeal to more intellectual upper class citizens.

Appendix E

[Thomas Pridgen Teale, Lavatory in a Dressing Room Opening out of a Bedroom with Wastepipe Untrapped and Connected with Soil Pipe, 1878, illustration, Dangers to Health: A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects, The New York Public Library, New York City, NY.]

The first cholera outbreak in London was in 1831, and it was not until 1858 that Parliament issued the construction of a new sewage system that was able to handle the large population. The sewers were finally completed by 1875, and throughout that 44-year period the middle class was able to successfully convince the larger working class and the more elite upper class that sanitary reform was necessary.35 Through art targeted to several anti-reform philosophies, the middle class slowly led the previously reluctant masses of London to a successful reform.

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Footnotes

[1] Edwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain: A Supplementary Report on the Results of a Special Inquiry into the Practice of Interment in Towns ; Made at the Request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department (Memphis, USA: General Books, 2012), 168, digital file.

[2] R. C. Allen, "Why the Industrial Revolution Was British: Commerce, Induced Invention, and the Scientific Revolution," The Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (2011): 366, JSTOR.

[3] John Kanefsky and John Robey, "Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment," Technology and Culture 21, no. 2 (1980): 186, https://doi.org/10.2307/3103337.

[4] John Komlos, "Nutrition, Population Growth, and the Industrial Revolution in England," Social Science History 14, no. 1 (1990): 74, https://doi.org/10.2307/1171364.

[5] E. A. Wrigley, "Urban Growth in Early Modern England: Food, Fuel and Transport," Past and Present, no. 225 (2014): 83, JSTOR.

[6] Michelle Allen, "From Cesspool to Sewer: Sanitary Reform and the Rhetoric of Resistance, 1848-1880," Victorian Literature and Culture 30, no. 2 (2002): 386-388, JSTOR.

[7] Jonathan P. Ribner, "The Thames and Sin in the Age of the Great Stink: Some Artistic and Literary Responses to a Victorian Environmental Crisis," The British Art Journal 1, no. 2 (2000): 38, JSTOR.

[8] Romola Jane Davenport, Max Satchell, and Leigh Matthew William Shaw-Taylor, "Cholera as a 'Sanitary Test' of British cities, 1831–1866," National Library of Medicine 24, no. 2 (2018):, digital file.

[9] Laura Ball, "Cholera and the Pump on Broad Street: The Life and Legacy of John Snow," The History Teacher 43, no. 1 (2009): 106, JSTOR.

[10] Michael Sigsworth, Michael Worboys, and Michael Warboys, "The Public's View of Public Health in Mid-Victorian Britain," Urban History 21, no. 2 (1994): 239, JSTOR.

[11] Allen, "From Cesspool," 386-387.

[12] Sigsworth, Worboys, and Warboys, "The Public's," 239.

[13] "Polluted Waterways—The Thames River and London’s Big Stink of 1858," in World History Encyclopedia, ed. Alfred J. Andrea and Carolyn Neel (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 14, Gale eBooks.

[14] Allen, "From Cesspool," 391, Ribner, "The Thames," 40.

[15] Allen, "From Cesspool," 383,

[16] Sigsworth, Worboys, and Warboys, "The Public's," 242.

[17] David Kunzle, "Between Broadsheet Caricature and 'Punch': Cheap Newspaper Cuts for the Lower Classes in the 1830s," Art Journal 43, no. 4 (1983): 339-346, https://doi.org/10.2307/776731.

[18] Shelley Wood Cordulack, "Victorian Caricature and Classicism: Picturing the London Water Crisis," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 9, no. 4 (2003): 538-539, JSTOR.

[19] Cordulack, "Victorian Caricature," 558.

[20] Wietske Smeele, "Grounding Miasma, or Anticipating the Germ Theory of Disease in Victorian Cholera Satire," The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 49, no. 2 (2016): 20, JSTOR.

[21] Simon Curtis, "The River Thames: London’s Riparian Highway," in Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy, by Andrew Smith and Anne Graham (n.p.: University of Westminster Press, 2019), 175, JSTOR.

[22] Ribner, "The Thames," 40-43.

[23] William Newman, "Dirty Father Thames," cartoon, Punch 14/15 (October 7, 1848): 151.

[24] Ribner, "The Thames," 39-44.

[25] Cordulack, "Victorian Caricature," 537-541.

[26] Noble S. R Maluf, "Owen's Gland," Sudhoffs Archiv 64, no. 1 (1980): 37, JSTOR.

[27] Ribner, "The Thames," 40-44.

[28] Olive Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Clarendon Press, 1987), 201.

[29] Simon Poë, "Robins of Modern Times: A Modern Girl in a Pre-Raphaelite Landscape," The British Art Journal 4, no. 2 (2003): 46, JSTOR.

[30] John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past, 1859, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London, England.

[31] Ribner, "The Thames," 40-44.

[32] "Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character 96, no. 679 (1924): 21-25, JSTOR.

[33] Allen, "From Cesspool," 392-397.

[34] Thomas Pridgin Teale, Dangers to Health: A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects (J. & A. Churchill, 1883), 21, E-Book.

[35] "Polluted Waterways—The Thames River and London’s Big Stink of 1858," in World History Encyclopedia, ed. Alfred J. Andrea and Carolyn Neel (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 14: Gale eBooks.