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It is now nearly forty years since the death of my grandfather, Dr Southwood Smith, and with this distance of time lying between him and us, it may not be uninteresting to this generation to look back upon the origin of some of the great social reforms which have now reached such wide proportions, and to see these reforms as gathered round the life of a man who was in the forefront of the noble army which promoted them. He, one of the first to seize a truth, one of the most indomitable to persev

My first recollection of my grandfather is of him in his study. As a little child my bed stood in his room, and when he got up, as he used to do in the early mornings, to write, he would take me in his arms, still fast asleep, carry me down-stairs to his study with him, and lay me on the sofa, wrapped in blankets which had been arranged for me overnight. So when first I opened my eyes in the silent room I saw him there, a man of some fifty years, bending over a table covered with papers, the lig

Thomas Southwood Smith was born at Martock in Somersetshire in 1788, and was intended by his family to become a minister in the body of Calvinistic dissenters to which they belonged. He was educated with that view at the Baptist College in Bristol, where he went in 1802, being then fourteen years of age. A scholarship, entitled the "Broadmead Benefaction," was granted to him, and he held it for nearly five years. But in the course of his earnest reading on religious subjects he was led to conclu

On first arriving in London in 1820, my grandfather, who whilst still at Yeovil had married for the second time (Mary, daughter of Mr John Christie of Hackney), [4] settled in Trinity Square, near the Tower. He soon formed a considerable private practice, and was appointed physician to the London Fever Hospital, and he was thus led to give very special attention to the subject of fever. He also held the offices of physician to the Eastern Dispensary and to the Jews' Hospital, situated in the ver

The 'Treatise on Fever' held an important place in the development of that sanitary ideal to the realisation of which my grandfather afterwards devoted himself almost exclusively; but in the course of the years which are treated of in this chapter, he wrote much on other subjects. During this time severe money losses had necessitated the breaking up of the establishment in Trinity Square; retrenchment became a duty; Mrs Southwood Smith went abroad with the three children of the second marriage [

In the year 1833 it became clear that some legal interference was necessary with regard to Factories. In order to understand the abuses which existed in factories in 1833, we must revert to the system of employment at the end of the last century and trace its gradual development. At that period all the spinning and weaving of the country was domestic, the spinning being carried on in farmhouses and scattered cottages in rural places by the mothers and daughters of the families, and the weaving b

Perhaps the most necessary and the most tried quality in a reformer is Patience. Notwithstanding the publication of the 'Treatise on Fever' in 1830, and the tribute paid by the scientific world to its masterly exposition of the treatment and causes of the disease, notwithstanding the constant and ardent endeavours of the author to propagate his views, yet seven long years passed away before he was able to awaken the apathy of the public and the authorities. Year after year went by, and the wards

It is not easy to convince a whole nation of the truth of new principles, however closely they may in reality affect its welfare; not easy to produce a degree of conviction that shall lead to practical, tangible results. The early workers in the public movements, such as that for Sanitary Reform, have first to spread such a knowledge of existing evils as shall create a general feeling of the need for improvement. They have to educate the public until it believes in that need. And when the vis in

Immediately after the passing of the Public Health Act, Lord Morpeth wrote to my grandfather that the changes made in the bill during its passage through Parliament had prevented the creation of any post which could be offered to him. Lord Morpeth said, however, that if Dr Southwood Smith would give the department the advantage both of his presence and counsel by accepting a seat on the Board, he hoped to provide for him a permanent post, by means of a supplementary Act, "The Diseases Prevention

When his official life came to a close, my grandfather retired to a house on Weybridge Heath, and he met the sudden cessation of his eager public life with the same calm courage with which he had met all the other crises in his career. This house had been built on a beautiful spot as a gathering-place for his much-loved and somewhat scattered family, and the beauty of its position came to be a great comfort to him when he turned his quiet days to the prosecution of literary work in his little st

My grandfather had travelled abroad but little during his strenuous life. He had, it is true, been to Paris in 1850, accompanied by Mr Charles Macaulay, Dr John Sutherland, and Mr (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson, on business connected with the General Board of Health scheme for extra-mural sepulture, but, except on that occasion, he had not left England. So that when in 1857 he was asked to join a party of three proceeding to Milan for the purpose of examining the irrigation works of that city,

It was at this time that the Prince Consort died, and England was full of mourning. Lord Shaftesbury speaks, in his diary of December 16, 1861, of that national loss, and then alludes to the death of my grandfather in these words:— "I hear, too, that my valued friend and coadjutor in efforts for the sanitary improvement of England is gone—the learned, warm-hearted, highly-gifted Southwood Smith." But the work he had set on foot and the principles he had established did not end with his life. The

Letter from Mr Taylor, Assistant Returning Officer of the Whitechapel Union, to Dr Southwood Smith ; written at the request of the latter, for Lord Ashley's use, after their personal inspection of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. 289 Bethnal Green Road , Feb. 5, 1842 . My dear Doctor ,—Lord Ashley, the Honorable Mr Ashley, and yourself visited the following places with me. I have arranged them in the form of a table: in one column is the name of the street, and, opposite, a brief notice of its con

Recognition of the Public Services of Dr Southwood Smith. At a Meeting held at the residence of the Earl of Shaftesbury on the 7th of May 1856 It was resolved That this Meeting, deeply impressed with the untiring and successful labours of Dr Southwood Smith in the cause of social amelioration, and specially recognising the value of these labours in the great cause of Sanitary Improvement , are anxious to tender him some mark of their personal esteem. That accordingly a bust of Dr Southwood Smith