1867.] The Public Health. 459 



public ear. Are the men of Manchester so entirely devoted to 

 money-getting that they can spare no time for these things ? Is 

 the price of cotton, or the value of railway shares so much more 

 important than the moral and physical well-being of those by whose 

 labour they gain their wealth, that they cannot give even a few 

 minutes to its consideration ? 



Their indifference is the more remarkable because the organs of 

 public opinion both in Manchester and London have striven to 

 direct attention to the subject. The local press has nobly done its 

 duty. Articles have from time to time appeared which ought to 

 have pierced the hide of the most pachydermatous of councillors. 

 Indications are not wanting that these attacks are at last beginning 

 to tell. The Council have shown an apj:>roach to a suspicion that 

 their position of passive resistance will not much longer be tenable. 

 They have at least ceased to affect absolute indifference to what is 

 said of them. At the annual meeting of the subscribers to the 

 Children's Hospital, held early in April in the Mayor's parlour, with 

 the Mayor in the chair, the medical officers to the charity ventured 

 to present a report, in which they said that they would not have so 

 many cases of typhus to heal, " if ordinary attention were paid to 

 the sanitary condition of the city." The mayoral dignity was 

 offended by this imputation on the Corporation, and his worship 

 refused to put the motion that the report be received unless the 

 obnoxious passage were expunged. An animated discussion ensued, 

 in which it would be difficult to say whether more ignorance or 

 hardihood of assertion was displayed by the defenders of the Corpo- 

 ration, but which ended, after the omission of the objectionable sen- 

 tence, with an acknowledgment from the Mayor that the sanitary 

 condition of the city was not in all respects what it ought to be. 

 The subject was brought before two subsequent meetings of the city 

 Council. The original report of the physicians to Children's Hos- 

 pital was quoted, as well as the article on the Health of Manches- 

 ter in our last number, and while some members of the Council 

 strenuously denied the truth of the allegations of municipal neglect, 

 others admitted that there was too much foundation for them. 

 The corporate rulers of Manchester are evidently not all of one 

 mind. By placing every member of the Council on the General 

 Purposes Committee, by which the real business of the Corporation 

 is transacted, and from whose discussions reporters are excluded, 

 they have done all in their power to conceal their dissensions. 

 Enough has, however, oozed out at the public meetings to show 

 that they are not a happy family. It has been shown, too, that 

 recent exposures have not been without practical effect. The 

 attempt to enforce the payment of a tax for the removal of dry 

 ashes, and thus to check the use of water-closets, has been at least 

 deferred. An audacious attempt by one of the Committees to re- 



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