Main description:

First published in 1952, this is a full-scale and definitive account of the life and work of Sir Edwin Chadwick. Among the sources used are the Chadwick Papers, the Peel, Place, Russell and Gladstone Papers, the Home Office, Treasury and Ministry of Health papers and the minutes and documents of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. Centred on this mass of material, this book demonstrates that the great social reforms of the Victorian age should be attributed, not so much to the Cabinets, but to the labours of a handful of civil servants. It also argues that Edwin Chadwick was the most influential of these civil servants and through this illuminating biography, Professor Finer gives an account of early Victorian administration as seen from inside.

This book will be of interest to those studying Victorian social reform, the history of the welfare state and social policy.

Contents:

Book One: A Young Man and a Great Radical; Book Two: Barrister into Civil Servant; Book Three: The Domestic Fiend of Somerset House; Book Four: The People and the New Poor Law; Book Five: The People and the New Poor Law; Book Six: Andover; Book Seven: The Triumph of the Public Health Movement; Book Eight: The Cholera; Book Nine: The Struggle for London; Book Ten: The Struggle for the Provinces; Book Eleven: The Third Career of Edwin Chadwick; Illustrations