Report of the Sanitary Committee of the Royal Society of Arts.

  • Royal Society of Arts of Jamaica. Sanitary Committee.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Sanitary Committee of the Royal Society of Arts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS OF JAMAICA. Fourth—A Vagrant Act, which may be combined with an Industrial Reformatory Institution. Here your memorialists offer for earnest attention, the valuable contribution of the Inspector General of Prisons, Mr. Da ugh trey, which forms the third part of the report annexed to this memorial. Fifth—A Reformatory Institution for juvenile criminals. These two last steps in social progress, your memorialists do not hesitate strongly to recommend, not only on account ol their own inherent good and corrective tendencies, but as vagrancy is always attended with idleness, and “ idleness is the mother of vice,” and idleness and vice are seldom long in companionship without engendering disease, they see and re- cognize in these Reformatory Institutions, not only a grand stride into the very centre of moral civilization, but a large contribution, on preventive principles, to the general health of the community. Sixth—A rigorous provision against squatting in and about the precincts of Kingston. This might find its proper place in the Towns and Communities Act, or in the Vagrant Act. Seventh—An inspectorship of roads, streets, lanes, and buildings. The duties of this single office, efficiently performed, your memorialists submit, would convert Kingston, which is now, with the exception of a few localities, one wide receptable of contaminating filth, a monument without parallel of neglect, as regards the dilapidated state in which the thoroughfares and buildings are allowed to remain, into a comparatively clean and siglrtly city. Eighth—-The establishment of a Public Garden within the Parade, which would turn an area of many acres, useless now. except as a place of deposit for all sorts of offal, into an orna- mental and salubrious focus of public resort. Ninth—The appointment of an Island Analyst. The im- portance of this suggestion, your memorialists are of opinion, cannot be over-rated. The absence of such an officer holds back any advance which might otherwise be made in the science of medical jurisprudence, and lends impunity to the dark and mysterious doings of the Obeali and Myal man, who now walk abroad in open day, wallowing in crime, and living in luxury, on the ill-gotten gains which their skill in the fasci- nation of fear wrings from the superstitious terrors of their dupes. Indirectly, too, the knowledge of a competent Toxico- logist, might be brought to bear on the detection of those hidden causes of death, which it is feared too many ol the female population of this island spontaneously risk, for the purpose of procuring abortion. The manner in which Ooroners and their juries have been baffled of late, in arriving at correct conclusions as to the causes of death, arc in them- selves painfully suggestive on this point. Tenth—An Inspectorship of Weights and Measures. The demoralizing influence, to say nothing of the actual fraud, which must attend upon the habitual use of false weights and measures, need not be enlarged upon. Enough to say that this corrupt practice prevails to an extent which would be marvelous if it were not strictly true. Your memorialists might proceed further to epitomize the report they now lay before your Excellency in Executive Committee, hut they fee! they have done enough by elimi- nating from the mass of information it contains, those salient points which will fix attention on their own importance, and invite it for those less prominent suggestions, from among which they have been selected. Your memorialists, recognizing as they do the close affinity between the sanitary training and the moral habits of a people, so graphically and forcibly depicted in the second part of the report appended hereto, furnished by the joint labour of the Revd. Mr. Vice-President Watson, and the llevd. Mr. Edmon- son, respectfully crave attention to the striking deductions with which that part of the report abounds—deductions so irrefutably clear, that they cannot be overlooked. The testimony borne throughout the reports to the depraved habits and the licentious excesses of the young, inflicts pain on every mind, and forces on the thoughts the necessity for juvenile reform. And the startling fact, that out of a com- puted population of upwards of thirty thousand souls in the City of Kingston, not more than six thousand are in com- munion with the various churches, if it did not rouse the energies of the philanthropist and the moral reformer, would overwhelm the great mass of apathetic lookers-on with despair of any possible improvement. But your memorialists entertain higher aspirations. They venture to hope that at the close of the new Government which has been so recently and so auspiciously inaugurated' among the most graceful memorials of its footsteps will be found an improved moral, social, and sanitary condition of the people, crowned by that greatest of a country’s blessings, the reformation of the young. With this view, your memorialists will spare no effort shrink from no investigation, share every responsibility, and' if invited so to do, will lend their aid in bringing to maturity any measures which may have a tendency in the direction they have pointed out. They are sensible of every difficulty, financial as well as moral, which must surround any Executive Government, when striking at the root of deep-seated and long- tolerated evils ; and they see, d fortiori, how much the diffi- culty must be enhanced in a country so little ameliorated by, though it possess all, the institutions of civilization, and in the midst of a population so heterogeneous as that of Jamaica. But they are of opinion, that the fault in this particular, lies rather at the door of constituted authority, than with the element on which that authority ought to be brought to bear namely, the mass of the people. This element, so far from being obstinate and irreclaimable, your memorialists consider plastic under favourable conditions, and well disposed to take that form which will best conduce to the general welfare and happiness. But authority to be respected must be firm, con- sistent, and impartial; and the favourable conditions of which they speak can never be expected to arise, unless a public sense is created that the arm and the eye of the law are never asleep. A vigorous law, feebly administered, so far from lessening the number of offenders, has a tendency to increase them, by impunity. This is so with penal laws in general. If too severe for the times, let them be erased from the statute book : if not severe enough, let them be made so. But while retained there at ail, let them, in the name of public responsi- bility and consistency, be strictly administered. It is this want of vigour in maintaining the supremacy of the laws, not in the judicial administration of them, either in the higher or the lower courts of justice, but in the lower executive branches of that administration, of which your memorialists complain. They are well aware that while many sanitary and reforma- tory measures which the appended reports suggest, are as yet untouched by legislation, there are nevertheless wholesome laws in full force on the statute book, which meet, and would eradicate, many of the evils of which they complain, were they once brought into, and maintained in, energetic operation. They would instance as one out of several, the “ Towns and Communities Act,” 7 Victoria, chapter 14, than which the Island laws can boast of none which more directly and more effectively, to a limited extent, takes under its watchful and penal protection the public health, the public morals, and the public safety and convenience. The provisions of this single Act, rigorously enforced, would soon put a new face even on a City like Kingston, uncared-for and utterly destitute of vigi- lant supervision as she is. Many of the most salutary provisious of this statute are, however, little better than a dead letter; and there is much more cognate legislation