Overview
After the Public Heath Acts of 1872 and 1875, British local authorities bore statutory obligations to carry out sanitary improvements. Richardson explores public health strategy and central-local government relations during the mid-nineteenth-century, using the experience of Uppingham, England, as a micro-historical case study. Uppingham is a small (and unusually well-documented) market town which contains a boarding school. Despite legal changes enforcing sanitary reform, the town was hit three times by typhoid in 1875–1876. Richardson examines the conduct of those involved in town and school, the economic dependence of the former on the latter, and the opposition to higher rates to pay for sanitary improvement by a local ratepayer ""shopocracy."" He compares the sanitary state of the community with others nearby, and Uppingham School with comparable schools of that era. Improvement was often determined by business considerations rather than medical judgments, and local personalities and events frequently drove national policy in practice. This study illuminates wider themes in Victorian public medicine, including the difficulty of diagnosing typhoid before breakthroughs in bacteriological research, the problems local officialdom faced in implementing reform, and the length of time it took London ideas and practice to filter into rural areas.
Full Product Details
Author: Nigel Richardson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 9780822966456
ISBN 10: 082296645
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 28 June 2021
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
"Meticulously researched and carefully analysed . . . manages to illuminate the wider picture of medicine and public health in rural England in the mid-Victorian period.-- ""Victorian Studies"" Not only is Nigel Richardson's book a comprehensive and detailed account of this traumatic episode in the school's history; it is also an extremely creditable contribution to the wider literature on public health in Victorian Britain.-- ""Isis"""
Meticulously researched and carefully analysed . . . manages to illuminate the wider picture of medicine and public health in rural England in the mid-Victorian period.-- ""Victorian Studies"" Not only is Nigel Richardson's book a comprehensive and detailed account of this traumatic episode in the school's history; it is also an extremely creditable contribution to the wider literature on public health in Victorian Britain.-- ""Isis""
Meticulously researched and carefully analysed . . . manages to illuminate the wider picture of medicine and public health in rural England in the mid-Victorian period. --Victorian Studies Not only is Nigel Richardson's book a comprehensive and detailed account of this traumatic episode in the school's history; it is also an extremely creditable contribution to the wider literature on public health in Victorian Britain. --Isis
Not only is Nigel Richardson's book a comprehensive and detailed account of this traumatic episode in the school's history; it is also an extremely creditable contribution to the wider literature on public health in Victorian Britain. --Isis Meticulously researched and carefully analysed . . . manages to illuminate the wider picture of medicine and public health in rural England in the mid-Victorian period. --Victorian Studies
Author Information
Nigel Richardson is former head of the Perse School in Cambridge.
