Eradicating the germs of pauperism: the political economy of the British sanitary movement in the 1830s and 1840s

The article addresses the British sanitary movement in the 1830s and 1840s, analyzing the ideology that permeated official efforts to promote public health. The sources used consist primarily of the inquiries carried out by royal commissions into the state of sanitation in towns and cities. The main argument is that the ideological assumptions underpinning these inquiries can be understood as part of a political economy of public health, within which tensions can be observed arising from the contradictions between a liberal perspective and the need for greater intervention on the part of the government.