The public's reaction to public health: petitions submitted to Parliament, 1847-1848

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.