Public Health Act 1848

The Public Health Act 1848 received royal assent on 31 August 1848, passed by the Whig government of Lord John Russell at the urging of Edwin Chadwick, whose Sanitary Report the year before had documented insanitary conditions across many British towns; it was further supported by the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns and local branches of the Health of Towns Association. The Act created the General Board of Health as a central authority, administered by three commissioners, empowered to set up local boards of health in urban areas to control sewers, clean streets and regulate water supply. It stands as the sanitation branch's own founding legislation, the first time the British state took general statutory responsibility for public sanitary conditions, and the local boards it established governed until they became urban districts in 1894.