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Social History of Medicine 2002 15(3):393-411; doi:10.1093/shm/15.3.393
© 2002 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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The Public's Reaction to Public Health: Petitions Submitted to Parliament, 1847–1848

James G. Hanley1

1 Department of History, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 Canada. E-mail: j.hanley{at}uwinnipeg.ca

Public reaction to public health legislation is often assumed to have mirrored that expressed in Parliament or in influential provincial newspapers, yet evidence for the public reaction to public health legislation is elusive. This article, based on an analysis of 871 petitions submitted to Parliament during the 1847 and 1847–8 parliamentary sessions, argues that, during 1847 and 1848, few issues stimulated more interest than public health, and that a geographically and socially diverse constituency embraced national sanitary legislation. It also argues that concerns about centralization did not dominate the petitions, and that the parliamentary interpretation of centralization overlapped but slightly with provincial concerns.

Keywords: Public Health Act; public petitions; public health; popular reaction; centralization; sanitary legislation


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