Public Health Act of 1848

Until 1848 a British town that wanted better streets, sewers or water had to obtain its own private Act of Parliament. From 1845 Parliament passed standard model clauses for such Acts, but each town still had to apply for its own. Edwin Chadwick's sanitary report of 1842 and the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns, appointed in 1843 to examine 50 English towns, made the case for one.

The Public Health Act of 1848 set up a General Board of Health for five years. A town could come under the act when at least one tenth of its ratepayers petitioned. Where deaths had averaged more than 23 per 1,000 people a year, the Board could send a superintending inspector to hold a public inquiry and then create a local board itself. The City of London and the districts under the metropolitan commissions of sewers were left out.

A local board of health took over the sewers and drains and had to drain, cleanse, cover or fill in foul ponds, open ditches and sewers. It could appoint an officer of health, with the General Board's approval, deal with nuisances, register slaughterhouses and, on the certificate of the officer of health or two medical practitioners, order a house cleansed to prevent disease.

In 1854 the General Board was reconstituted, and a new Public Health Act abolished it in 1858, passing its work to the Local Government Act Office and the Medical Department of the Privy Council. Only with the Sanitary Acts of 1866 to 1870 were local authorities made responsible for providing sewers, water and street cleaning and required to appoint sanitary inspectors.