Collectanea de Diversis Rebus: Addresses and Papers

PREFACE

The following Addresses and Papers on various subjects have been selected from many others contributed by the Author, as thought to be possibly of sufficient interest in their respective spheres to justify their reproduction in a collected form. They are very diverse in their character, and embrace a great variety of topics.

It has been well said that all men are delighted to look back; and the Author, whilst thus recalling past work, can only express the hope that some of these Papers may have contributed, however infinitesimally, each in their own way and at their respective times, to help forward the appreciation of the then present, or the progress of the world’s welfare or knowledge in the future.

Norwich, 1908.

I.

PROPOSED PROVISION OF RECREATION GROUNDS FOR NORWICH

Condensed Report of Speech in Norwich Town Council, 1880, reprinted from the Norwich Mercury of October 23rd, 1880: —

Dr. Eade, pursuant to notice, rose to call attention to the question of recreation or playgrounds for the children of Norwich.

He reminded the Council that four or five years ago, after some considerable talk with leading citizens, he ventured in the public Press to call attention to the deficiency which existed in Norwich in respect of recreation or playgrounds, and also of public baths. Ever since that time the question had, more or less, started up at intervals, while certain steps had been taken, which, in the course of time, would probably result in something being achieved. But, as time went on, the city was growing rapidly, open spaces were built upon, and he and those who were anxious to see something done were passing away. He had, therefore, taken upon himself once again to call attention to the subject, and to ask the Council to take action upon it.

After remarking upon the great importance now generally attached to questions affecting the public health, sanitation, or preventive medicine – for these were synonymous terms – and the intimate connection now everywhere recognised between the general welfare of the population of our great cities, and the absence of disease, with the consequent reduction in the death-rate, Dr. Eade said that it was entirely from the point of view of the public health that he wished to call attention to this subject. The physical growth, the physical well-being, and the physical development of the population formed a large branch of this subject; and he was afraid that, with regard to this, Norwich could not be said to be in the forefront of progress. Even since he first mooted the question many of the open spaces which he then believed available for the purpose had been built over or otherwise dealt with.

Norwich, once a city of gardens, was rapidly becoming a cramped and over-crowded city – at least, in its older portions; and in the new portions no provision was made for the physical welfare of the population, and no opportunities were given for the physical development of the children. Not in a single instance had a good wide roadway been opened up in the new districts; on the contrary, he was sorry to see in one or two of the most populous districts roads which ought to be great, wide thoroughfares, nothing better than narrow lanes. One most remarkable instance was Unthank’s Road, which was being built up at the lower part where it was extremely narrow, so that instead of being made a great artery for the traffic of the city, it was converted into a mere lane, and it ought to be called Unthank’s Lane – not dignified by the name of road.

No doubt before many years were over the city would have to incur a large expenditure in widening that and other roads. How short-sighted, then, was the policy of allowing such encroachments to go on!

To show what bearing these points had on public opinion long ago, Dr. Eade pointed out that even in Shakespeare’s time the question was raised, as was seen in “Julius Cæsar.” Mark Antony, in his speech to the citizens, first asks – “Wherein did Cæsar thus deserve your love?” and then the reply comes (by his Will) “To every Roman citizen he gives seventy-five drachmas;” and afterwards —

Dr. Eade proceeded to say he wished there were Julius Cæsars at the present time desirous of making wills for the benefit of Norwich. He then quoted the opinions of Lord Shaftesbury and the Lancet as to places of public recreation and their influence upon the physical and moral welfare of the population, and added, that he fully agreed with the writer in the Daily Press, signing himself “C. I. T.,” when he wrote – “The city expects the authorities to guard the health and lives of the humbler population at all costs.”

Other towns had done and were doing that which he wanted them to do in Norwich. Towns as large as Birmingham and as small as Falmouth, had provided public parks, and many had more than one. Birmingham had seven parks and recreation grounds, Sheffield four, and Bradford three, while the latter town had lately spent £150,000 in carrying out what he was now advocating. Norwich had a population of 90,000, and was rapidly increasing and spreading on almost all sides – open spaces being constantly taken up for building purposes. Though they had playgrounds attached to School Board schools, he was sorry to find they were not available to the juvenile population – that they were only open to the children attending the schools during school hours, or a few minutes before and after school.

Norwich stood the very lowest on the list of the towns of England with regard to this question of recreation grounds. They had waited and waited until the difficulty of providing such places had greatly increased, while if they waited longer these difficulties would become almost insuperable. When he first started in this matter he could have found, or had the offer of, several open places, but those were now built over. He, at that time, took a great deal of trouble in the matter, but soon found that notwithstanding the support given him by several prominent citizens, it was far too large a matter for a single individual to carry through; but now he had the honour of a seat in the Council he claimed their attention, and, if possible, their powerful sympathy and support. They might ask where was the demand for recreation grounds. He asked those who had children to bring up whether they would allow them to play in narrow streets and crowded courts breathing impure air? What was the reason of there being so many puny, delicate, and small children? He ventured to say this was almost entirely due to the unwholesome surroundings in which they were brought up. He mentioned that in Glasgow recently, one medical man lecturing in that city said that in one year he had treated 330 cases of children with deformed bones – bent legs, bent thighs, knock-knees, etc. – which deformities were entirely due to the want of proper development and to their unwholesome surroundings. Much superior in many respects as Norwich was to Glasgow, he ventured to say that the same condition of things existed here. But the demand for places of recreation was, he contended, proved by the fact that whenever a plot of ground was cut up for building purposes, children crowded there from all parts of the city to play, and this they continue to do until driven away by the advance of bricks and mortar. Then, too, Chapel Field, when it was open, was often taken advantage of by 500 and 600 children and others, who went there for play and enjoyment.

After making other observations as to the need of such places, Dr. Eade said there were two ways in which the want might be supplied. Playgrounds could not be taken close to every door; but in every new district care should be taken to secure the setting apart of a certain amount of space for the children. One plan he would suggest was that at various points in the city a field should be purchased and thrown open to the children; and another plan was to purchase or hire a large space which might be converted into a people’s park, with a small portion set apart for the use of children.

It might be said that such places would really be used by the rough portion of the population; but he contended that it was for just this portion of the population they were most required. Let the rough children be brought up to know the worth of fresh air, what it is to have healthy frames, so that in after life they may not be poor and puny and miserable. The very fact that the rough children of the poor would use these places was an argument in favour of their provision. A healthy body meant not only a healthy mind, but a contented mind; and with recreation grounds for their use the children might be expected to grow up amenable to proper and right feelings, and in every sense better members of the community.

Believing as he did in the doctrine of salus populi suprema lex, he earnestly recommended the Council to take some steps in the direction he had indicated.

He concluded by moving – “That this Council, recognising the duty of providing recreation grounds for the children of Norwich, appoints a special committee to consider and report as to the best means of carrying out this resolution.”

A Committee of the Council was then at once appointed.

Note. – At this date there were practically no public recreation grounds. At the present time we have the following: —

Mousehold Heath, 150 acres.

Chapel Field Gardens.

The Castle Gardens.

The Gildencroft.

Waterloo Park.

South Heigham, 6 acres.

The Woodlands Plantation (given by Mrs. Pym).

Lakenham and St. Martin’s Bathing Places and Grounds.

Eaton Park, 80 acres.

Besides the numerous smaller spaces and churchyards which have been re-arranged and planted, and made both pleasing and (many of them) suitable for outdoor use or rest. For the promotion and carrying out of these, we are most largely indebted to Mr. Edward Wild, Mr. W. E. Hansell, and the Rev. J. Callis, with one or two others.

This and the next following Address were the outcome of the very strong impression produced upon the Author by observing the puniness or physical inferiority of much of the poor population with whom he had to deal as Physician to the Norwich Dispensary, when first coming to Norwich, as compared with that of the neighbouring country district where he had formerly resided. It appeared to him that want of outdoor exercise and the public-house habit were the main causes of this difference. And hence these two subjects of Recreation and Temperance at once engaged his attention, as they have continued to do ever since.

How such views have now developed, and also that of the necessity of good air and exercise for the young, in order to normal adult health and vigour, is patent to all.

II.

ON TEMPERANCE AND AIDS TO TEMPERANCE

An Address given at the Parochial Hall, South Heigham, in March, 1879, at a meeting held for the purpose of forming for the parish a branch of the Church of England Temperance Society, the Rev. J. Callis, Vicar, presiding.

Reprinted from the Norwich Mercury of March 5th, 1879.

The evils of excessive drinking are vast and widespread. As doctors, we are constantly being brought face to face with them – in injured health, in wasted life, in ruined homes. Much has been said, and will doubtless be said again to-night, on these points; and the desirability of a Temperance Society for this, as for other parishes, will be enforced. But believing that our object is to promote temperance in every possible way, I shall to-night allude to some of those social conditions which necessarily have a great bearing upon this important question.

Now, it is well known that much difference of opinion has existed as to the influence exerted by fermented liquors when taken in small or reasonable quantities, some thinking that in these small quantities they are pleasant and practically harmless; others holding that in no quantity are they either necessary or even free from injurious effects. Whatever may be the absolute truth of either of these opinions in reference to a limited use of these liquors, I think all are of one mind as to their pernicious effects when taken in any considerable quantity. All are agreed that drunkenness is a vice, baneful to the individual, hurtful to his friends; while doctors and physiologists are unanimous in asserting it to be positively proved that a too free use of them not only produces the outwardly injurious effects with which we are so familiar, but also gradually induces such degenerative disease of various internal organs as undermines the health and materially shortens the existence of the individual. With such a conflict of opinion still existing, our society wisely declines to decide that which science has been unable to settle, and opens wide her doors, and asks both these classes of thinkers to come in. She invites one section of her members to do no violence to their views of what constitutes temperance, or of the right way of influencing their neighbours. She merely asks them to join this society, and simply pledge themselves to practice and encourage that temperance as to which everyone may agree. But she tries to speak more mildly to those who are travelling in the well-trod road of Intemperance, which leads to mental and bodily ruin; and she entreats them to embrace the only means yet known which can save them from their destructive course. She asks them to pledge themselves to endeavour, by entire abstinence from the destroying drink, to save themselves from the miserable end to which they are hastening.

Speaking for myself and of myself, although a very moderate and small drinker, I am not an abstainer.1 But though believing that many persons may take a small quantity of fermented liquor without being the worse for it, I also know that to many persons even a small quantity is more or less injurious; whilst as to others, I can but repeat what has been so often said before, and I do it with the greatest possible emphasis, that to many alcohol is a positive poison, unsuited to their temperaments, destructive to their health, and productive of the worst evils, both morally and physically. It is curious to notice, in passing, not only that the use of wine is alluded to through a large part of the Bible history, but also that the injurious effects of it seem always to have been precisely the same in character as those which are so much dilated on in the present day. Dr. Richardson, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the physiological properties of alcohol, and the greatest denouncer of its habitual use, speaks of its effects according to the increased quantities in which it is used. He describes its influence thus: – “In the first stage of alcoholism,” i. e., in small quantity, he says, “it tends to paralyse the minute blood vessels, producing their relaxation and distension, illustrated by the flush seen on the face of those who have (in familiar language) been drinking, by the redness of the eyes and nose,” etc., etc. This stage of excitement, he describes as being followed – if the quantity be increased – by some loss of muscular power, with disturbance of the reasoning powers and of the will; whilst again a further quantity produces a complete collapse of nervous function, when the drunken man, who previously, perhaps, had been excited, talking loud, and staggering in his walk, becomes stupid, helpless, and falls into a heavy sleep. And are we not all familiar with the quotations: – “His eyes shall be red with wine”; “Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging”; “They are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment”; “They shall drink and make a noise as through wine”; “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.” “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”

Those who have taken the trouble to read Dr. Richardson’s lectures on alcohol, will see that the effects of wine, as thus described long ages ago, are identical with those which he found experimentally to result from alcohol at the present day; and the redness of the eyes, the contentions and quarrelling, the loss of judgment, and the ulterior disastrous results to the health, spoken of in the infallible Word, are only too familiarly known at the present day. Nor let it be said that wine is not the beverage of the multitude at the present time. For this point has also been experimentally investigated by Dr. Richardson, and he found that whatever the alcoholic drink, or whatever the adulterations, the effect of these variations was insignificant, and that the real evil results of drinking were always due to the alcohol contained in the fermented liquors, whether these were wine, beer, or ardent spirits. But the subject of drinking and its evil influences, both physical and moral, has now been so long and so often placed before the public, that I shall gladly employ the short time left to me in alluding to some suggestions which have been made, with a view to assist in remedying the drinking habits of the people, and to enable them to wean themselves from these where no hope of voluntary or total abstention on a large scale can reasonably be hoped for. These suggestions have been very numerous. The first and most sweeping suggestion is the well-known one, which ignores every other consideration but the evil effects of the excessive use of alcohol, and proposes to get rid of drunkenness by rendering it impossible to get the drink. Legislation tending to this end was tried, as is well known, in America, under the title of the Maine Liquor Law, but its success has not been such as to induce other localities to follow the example. Again, systems of partial restriction, such as are known as the Gothenburg system, have been tried, or proposed, in the form of a Permissive Bill, such as has been advocated by Sir Wilfrid Lawson; but neither of these have commended themselves to the judgment of mankind as being the right solution of this question. The fact is social man and mankind constitute a large question. Over indulgence is not limited to the cravings of the stomach. Vice would not be eradicated by the simple removal of beer, however much assisted by it, and man would not be at once raised to the desired moral level were public-houses at once abolished. And so out of this conviction have arisen the various efforts which have been made, and are being persistently made, to attain, or assist in attaining, the wished-for results by more gradually acting moral means. These means, or aids to temperance, as I would call them, embrace several distinct influences, all of which such a temperance society as this is calculated to exert. They consist, primarily, in diffusing among the population, by meetings, by speeches, and by writings, a thorough knowledge of the personal evil which such habits necessarily and inevitably produce; (1) By bringing to bear the influence which friends and neighbours, so instructed, can exercise; (2) By forming public opinion and rendering it so forcible that the general mass of individuals must needs bow to its dictates; and, lastly, by these and all other assisting means, endeavouring to strengthen the personal control of self, and to make the individual himself contribute entirely to, not only his own good, but, by his improved example, to that of his neighbours and the community at large. I trust that through the force of public opinion it will soon be thought by the working classes as vulgar and as low to get intoxicated, as it now is by those with more advantages of means and information.

Much has been said and written about the influence which education is likely to exert in the future upon the habits of the people. There can be no doubt, I think, that the influence which will be gradually so exercised will be very great. A mind trained to better things will abhor and revolt at the gross pleasure which it would otherwise have tolerated or enjoyed. And we all (I am sure) rejoice to see that education is being spread abroad in our land, and that the rising generation will all, in greater or less degree, have their minds trained sufficiently to prevent their slumbering in the lowest abysses of non-development, and to awaken them, and to lead them to the knowledge at least that there are better enjoyments in the human body and the human mind than the false and injurious excitement of incessant alcoholic stimulation. But, unfortunately, education is like a tree. It takes a long time for its development, and the circumstances of the time are too urgent to wait in dependence alone upon this agency. For all the while that we are talking, the world is living and acting, and living under such conditions that, if present customs are to be changed, others and better ones must be found and provided in substitution for them.

There is a population to deal with, a people largely and often exhaustively occupied during the day, and so occupied, that a large portion of it requires some relaxation in the evening, after the hours of toil shall have passed away. In the country districts the difficulty is less; but in the crowded districts of our large towns, where often many houses, without any surroundings, exist, and these, when present, often not the most wholesome or commodious, some means of passing the evening in reasonable recreation are absolutely necessary. The richer classes even, in large towns and cities, have felt the need of their clubs and meeting places, and gradually, also, working-men have followed this example, and have, in many places, set up their clubs of various kinds. If anyone would like to know the demand that exists for evening places of resort, I would ask him to observe the throngs of people who pour out of the public-houses on their closing at the hour of eleven at night. It is not to be supposed that all the frequenters of these houses of entertainment are drunkards, are even lovers of strong drink, although, from the constitution of these houses, they must necessarily drink to pay for the accommodation they receive; but they use them as clubs, as the only places open to them in which they can spend their evenings, and in which they find the light, the warmth, the company, the newspapers, the interchange of speech, which they crave, and which are there alone obtainable. This view of the uses to which the public-house parlour is applied, is confirmed by observation of what happens when a well-appointed circus or other similar place of outdoor amusement is located in such a town as Norwich. For although no drink, good or bad, is sold in the building, yet it may be seen for weeks together to be nightly thronged by a company of one, or, perhaps, two thousand people.

Acting upon this idea, and on this principle, there have now been established in many places public-houses without those elements which render them undesirable. The Café Company’s houses, like to that recently opened in Norwich (and to which, I am sure, we all wish good speed), in which provision is made for amusement, for food, and for non-intoxicating drinks, are of this class, and so are the establishments of the London Coffee Public-house Association, and the Coffee Tavern Company, and others. But a recent writer (Mr. Moggridge, Macmillan, October, 1878) goes much further, and suggests the trial of the plan of retaining the present public houses, while keeping their attractive features, throwing the sale of drink so far into the background that it shall be the least prominent and important part of the establishment.

At present, of course, the public-houses exist only or chiefly in the sale of fermented liquors, and not for the benefit of the frequenter, whose primary object is often, at least at first, the enjoyment of the public parlour and its society. The writer above mentioned proposes, at least for a time, to convert them into veritable clubs, where fermented drinks can certainly be obtained, but where they shall by no means be the great and prominent part of the refreshment provided. He thinks that then it might be possible gradually to wean a large portion of their frequenters from their drinking habits, and gradually also to introduce a better and more harmless system than now prevails. Whether or not such a scheme as this is practicable, or even desirable, it appears certain that in any attempt to close the present houses of public resort, other and more suitable ones must be provided.