This Day in History: 1800-01-24

Edwin Chadwick born this day in 1800. Chadwick is the author of the 1842 Report on Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, and he is a tireless — and also tiresome — advocate for public health reform in the UK. Following the cholera epidemic of 1848, Parliament created the Board of Health. But by 1854 it was dismissed, partly because of Chadwick’s rigid and uncompromising personality, and partly because cholera was rapidly increasing in 1848, so the board’s work seemed to be having no effect. The Times of London approves of Chadwick’s firing in 1854 in this memorably barb: “We prefer to take our chance of cholera than be bullied into public health.”