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 Part I The Effort to Understand

17 The City as a Natural System

Theories of Urban Society in Early

Nineteenth -Century Britain

Graeme Davison

I
Few ideas have exercised as powerful an influence upon students of urban
society as the organic or biological conception of the city. From Aristotle's
Politics totTieChicago School and beyond, soCial tJieonsts have likened
cities to bodies or organisms; dissected them into constituent organs, such
as 'heart', 'lungs' and'arteries'; and charted their growth and decay. These
metaphors reflect a long-standing conflict in western thought. On one
hand. cities were exalted as the intelligent creation of civilized man and
were sharply distinguished from the products o(unreflective nature. Yet
they also manifested an astonishing order within their vast complexity,
and demonstrated a capacity for growth and self-regulation that
resembled the working of nature itself. Akin to nature, cities nevertheless
stood apart from nature, and so reflected man's own ambiguous relation­
ship to the natural order. From time to time, the balance between these
ideas - the city as man-made; the city as natural has shifted back and
forth in response to changing experiences of urban life and changing
assumptions about man and his place in nature.
During t~dy nineteenth century, as. ind_ustrialization and class
,coiiIIiCtSnarpened the division between city and countrv, the orgaiiiCidea·
" 9"f crt:y hfe was transformed into something very li~e.a.scientificlIieory:-rn
Brrtam-.--w!mr~ii'!itioii proceeaeamost rapidly, this conception of the
city as a 'social body' provided the intellectual matrix for a new
programme of empirical urban investigation and scientific reform. H.a.w..an
organic conception of society. grounded in the eighteenth-centur.L'.P,l1.ilo­
-soPF.yohlature";·i)ecailie.~lj~_ fl.~.§i~·f9i'ai1ineteel}!h~~ntYrY-2ociQ!Qgy of
the city is a guestig~hich .raise!:) fU!!.oal!1e-!ltalj§J,!yeJ?<:Q!1cernil!!Lf.he
nature of 'theurban' and the role of ideology in social enquiry. .
Tiro issues 'in parBciiIardeseive closer study. How,' we might first
enquire. did the city become established as an object of social-scientific
knowledge? To point to the growth of the new industrial cities is not
 350 Graeme Davison
enough; we must also locate the scientific paradigms which made them
knowable. Cities are perhaps the most complex form of human society and
the function of a paradigm - such as the conception of the city as a
natural system - was to bring thfi! manifold complexity of city life within
the range of scienti:f,c understanding. The second, and related issue,
concerns the social arid political Jlurposes for which that knowledge was
used. No paradigm - at least no paradigm of social enquiry - can be
ideologically neu tral and the organic conception of urban life has long been
a favourite device of conservatIve and tree-marketId:eQIOgISts."Yetdurmg
t::..1J.. "~lilfillj"illilh 'century;TWiIf ar e, it served the uros;sora.
~I roader s ectrum of social theorIsts, an became a ke conce t even
among t ose re ormers an re e s who modified or rejected it.
At the dawn of the industrial era, the ruling ideas of nature, and of the
city, were those of a predominantly rural society. The great sages of the
late eighteenth century were country gentlemen and their writings on
theology, philosophy and political economy exhibit the rationality and
harmony that they perceived in nature and esteemed in human society.
Theirs was a universe in which God, like a provident landlord, kept all his
creatures purposefully at work, each with its own function within the
wonderful economy of the whole. Rev. William Paley, in his Natural
Theology, gave the most famous description of the paradigm. 'The
universe', he wrote ... is a system; each part either depending on other
parts, or being connected with other parts by some common law of motion
or by the presence of some common substance.' The perfect contrivance of
the system demonstrated a beneficient purpose in the universe. 'Con­
trivance proves design: and the predominant tendency of the contrivance
indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds in
contrivances: and all the contrivances we are acquainted with are directed
to beneficial purposes.' I Paley's conception of the universe was primarily
mechanical - witness his famous illustration of the watch - but he drew
his illustrations of its operation mainly from natural history and human
anatomy. He was himself a countryman born and bred and his rustic
speech and dress made him something of an oddity in urbane Cambridge.
Natural Theology, written after his return to Cumberland as a country
parson, owes its charm and force to the author's remarkable powers of
natural observation and talent for homely illustration.~ Under his hand
every filament of nature's complex web - the wing of the thrush, the fin of
the trout, the scent of the flower, the fang of the viper - was woven into a
delicate pattern of benign contrivance.
The experience of the country gentleman and his notions of moral and
social order also shaped the writings of contemporary social philosophers.
While ~dW Smithyas familiar with city life in Glasgow, London and
Paris, hIS ealth of Nations viewed society from the vantage point of his
own 's{Ilall town in Scotland'.:) The agricultural village and small market
INarurtll Thc%){v; or EI'ideflcl!8 of Ihe Existeflce and Altitudes of Ih" Deitv 1l5th edn.
London. t1l151. pp. 449,567. . in later life to exalt the constitutional role of the landed interest. (Edinburgh Review LXIV
2G.W. Meadley. Memoirs of William Paley iLondon, 18091, pp. 10,39,61.
:lAdam Smith to Andreas Holt, 26 October. 1780 in E.C. Mossner and I.R. Ross. eds.. The
('orrespondelH'" of Adam Smith iOxford. 1977), p. 252. For a discussion of Smith's know!·
The City as a Natural System 351
town were treated as the main centres of production and trade while larger
commercial and manufacturing towns entered his speCUlations only
insofar as they consumed the products of agriculture or aided its 'improve­
ment and cultivation',4 Hence the relationship between town and country,
like their trade, was perfectly reciprocaL Indeed Smith's economic nation
bore a structural resemblance to Paley's natural system: the 'invisible
hand' of the market was the economic counterpart of Paley's superin­
tending deity. 5
To omas Malthus the smile of the Almighty hid behind a more frown­
ingprovl e IS,l Paley's and Smith's, was a rural view of the world
though it was a more grimly parsonical one than theirs. Just as his
estimate of the means of subsistence was limited by his experience of the
village economy, so his fears of man's unchecked procreativity were borne
out by his observations of rustic society.6 In the first edition of his Essay
on Population (1798), it is true, Malthus gave a brief but adverse verdict on
the demographic effects of urbanization. 'By encouraging the industry of
the towns more than the industry of the country', he wrote, 'Europe may
be said, perhaps, to have brought on a premature old age'.7 Twenty-eight
years later, when the final edition of the Essay appeared, Malthus had
apparehtlymod1fted his opinion for he now stressed, as SmItfili:aaaomr.
the interdependence of rural and urban occupations and claimed that 'the
improved habits of cleanliness, which appear to have prevailed of late
years in most of the towns of Europe, have probably in point of salubrity,
more than counter-balanced their increased size. '8 The~!lI.a,nce...~f
_ imprQy~d_habits a~ __~_..£ounter-influence. to the deaE!Y:(lff~g.ts. of town
growth was1V1althus' s ch~a.ct~ristiCaeviceIorreq;ndling.A.~1!.ta~trophic ~
.J.2!:~£~Iwltn"the designs of providellce. In human affairs, as distinct from
nature, divine order was achieved by ihe exercise of intelligence and moral
responsibility. The more man distanced himself from nature - that is, the
more civilized or urbanized he became - the more his intelligence and
virtue must needs improve.
Natural theology. and its implications for morals and politics, continued
to exercise educated men long after Paley's day. From the ancient
universities - where his works were used as textbooks by undergraduates
throughout the nineteenth century - to dissenting academies and
secularist lecture halls in the provinces, Paley's doctrines were a perennial
edge of urban and industrial conditions see C.P. Kindillberger. 'The Historical
Background - Adam Smith and the Industrial Revolution', with comments by Asa Briggs
and R.M. Hartwell in Thomas Wilson and Andrew S. Skinner. eds., The Market and the State
Essays in HOflour of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1976). pp. 1-41.
4An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London. 1776), Book
II I. ch. III.
5Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments edited by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Mackie
(Oxford. 1976), pp. 7.236; and compare William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political
Economy (London, 1814). II, p. 376.
Gin choosing to become a clergyman Malthus confessed his preference for 'a retired life in
the country' (James Bonar. Malthus and His Work !London. 1885), p. 4001 and he continued
{l83?) p. 480).
on Population ilst edn, London, 1798). p. 344.
edn, London, 1826). I. pp. 83,198,242.

 352 Gmeme Davison
subject of speculation and debate. 9 Within the mainstream of trinitarian
Christianity, natural religion took second place to revelation: the
argument from design was treated as 'an irresistable proof' of a Designer,
but a 'limited and imperfect' demonstration of His nature. lO But among
rational Dissenters and broad churchmen natural theology remained the
linchpin of belief. Among the most radical and sceptical of believers - the
tiny minority of Unitarians - this stress upon a rational and ordered
universe was fortified by a deep hostility to entrenched dogmas and
institutions and gave a strong impetus towards scientific enquiry. The
contributions to natural science by late eighteenth-century Unitarians,
such as Priestley, Dalton and Hartley, are well known. But in the early
nineteenth century Unitarian intellectuals were drawn increasingly
toward~ial and political enquirya~ular, to the problems of
the gr~ing 1:itie§, --=- ----­
~now of no sect of Dissenters but Unitarians from whom there is any
/ hop;~f raising up a class of fearless investigators and earnest reformers in
/ morals and religion', wrote James Martineau to his fellow Unitarian divine
W.J. Fox in 1835. 11 His boast is impressively vindicated by the roll-call of
Unitarians or 'neo-Unitarians' among urban investigators during the rest
..;)
of the century.12 Martineau himself had taken a lead in promoting
Missions to the Poor'on the pattern advocated by the American Unitarian,
Dr Joseph Tuckerman, during his tour of several English provincial cities
in 1834. 13 Unitarian families, such as the Rathbones, Gregs, Carpenters
and Kennedys, had been prominent in the Statistical societies which
:s;r;!rang up in Manchester ..!3!:istc)} and Leeds ana sponsored~_wlae_!:aJlg.~.Q[
_ enquiries into the 'moral and pliyt;llC_I;lL~o.:[cl.ifii:ln'j)f~.w.o.rking.....
~,14 Unitariansnefped lay the foundatiQns of the sanitary movement:
Thomas Southwood Smith had served as a Unitarian minister while com­
pleting his medical studies in Edinburgh and moved in Unitarian circles in
London during the 1820s and 30s; Edwin Chadwick once lowered his
bureaucratic mask to confess himself as being 'of the belief of Jeremy
Taylor, of Bishop Berkeley, of Paley'; while Neil Arnott, the third of the
famous sanitarians, had also defended Paley's arguments as 'a fit founda­
9D.L. Mahieu. The Mind of William Paley (Lincoln. Nebraska. 1977). p. 53; F.B. Smith.
'The Atheist Mission. 1840-1910' ill Robert Robson. ed.. Ideas and Institutions of
Victorian Britain (London. 1967). p. 208.
IOSee. for example. Robert Vaughan. Essays in History. Philosophy and Theology
(London. 1849). II. p. 118; Congregational Magazine V (1841). p. 197.
1130 May. 1835 as quoted in R. Garnett, The Life of WJ. Fox. Public Teacher and Social
Reformer. 1786-1864 (LonOon. 19lO). p. 169.
12See. for example. R. V. Holt. The Unitarian Contribution to Social Progress in England
(London. 1938).
13J. Eslin Carpenter.James Martineau (London. 1905). pp. 155-6.
14M.J. Cullen. The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain. The Foundations of
Empirical Social Research (London, 1975), pp. 107-8, 121-2; David Elesh. 'The
Manchester Statistical Society: A Case Study of Discontinuity in the History of Empirical
Social Research', Jou.rnal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences VII! (1972). p. 281.
Similar connections appear between Unitarianism and social enquiry in the United States in
the 1830s. See L.L. Bernard and Jessie Bernard. Origins of American The Social
Science Movement in The United States (New York. 1943). pp. 62-112: Howe. The
Unitarian Conscience Harvard Moral Philosophy 1805-1861 (Cambridge Mass.. 1970). esp_
pp.243-55_
The City as a Natural System 353
tion for the sublime doctrine of immortality' .15 Dr George Calvert Holland,
the radical Sheffield doctor who carried out some of the first enquiries into
occupational disease, had been educated as a Unitarian divine. Even
Henry Mayhew had identified himself in the 1840s as a 'friend' of William
Cooke Taylor and an advocate of natural history and theology. In
The distinctive contribution of Unitarians to urban social enquiry has
often been noted but seldom satisfactorily explained. Unitarians were
among the most urbanized of religious groups and at the 1851 Religious
. Census almost half of their Sunday attenders dwelt in large towns, espe­
<I cially in the new industrial centres of the North and Midlands where the
~\ social effects of urban growth had been most dramatic. 17 With their faith in
"1' \ the inherent goodness of mankind, they may have been more inclined than
(I
rthOdOX Christians to look for environmental explanations for human ills.
And, as the most rationalistic of sects, they took it for granted that
systematic enquiry would lead to beneficial reform. For all these reasons,
Unitarians were at the forefront of enquiries into conditions of urban
ealth, housing and poverty.
But the new towns not only challenged Unitarian benevolence; they
posed a direct threat to Unitarian theology. As lon~s he dwelt in the
c~!:1n_t!"ysiQ~,_Ut~Jl!.th::mal believer 'Ya~su.r!:olln~~ bi
mng testlmoflytO_
", liod's providenCE!. But in thElrnean, and~<;:ial environs of an industrial
town, naturaIJ!t!:tQIQgyJost its traarbonal frame of reference. 'Where',
InqUlreaa Unitarian miilister,--'shoufd'natural theology acquire and
maintain any influence except in the haunts and among the actual objects
of nature? '18 In the city, the works of the Creator were all but obliterated
by those of his creatures. As a 'counter-influence', Unitarians were advised
to take regular holidays in the countryside or to :visit museums of natural
history. But the masses of urban poor, who took no holidays and seldom
escaped their own blighted neighbourhoods, were denied an appreciation
of nature's grand design. In the 1830s Unitarian missionaries in
Manchester came to their aid with an exhibition of 'specimens of natural
history' displayed under 'a highly magnifying glass'. (At the end of
proceedings visitors were invited to join in singing 'Addison's sublime
hymn on the starry firmament'.)19 Working-class converts to natural
theology must have been pitifully few, But Elizabeth Gaskell, a Unitarian
J;C.L. Lewes. Southwood Smith A Retrospect (Edinburgh. 18891. p. 10; M. Pelling,
Cholera. Fever and English Medicine 182.5-18(;5 (Oxford, 1978). pp. 7 -10; Edwin Chadwick
to Dr Buckland. 17 January 1844. Chadwick Papers (University College. London); Neil
Arnott. Elements of Physics. Natural Philosophy, general and medical (5th edn. London.
1833), I. pp. xxxi-xxxii.
16DNB; Henry Mayhew. What to Teach and How to Teach it (London. 1842). pp. 12.44.
17While 48.6 per cent of those recorded as attending Unitarian places of worship were
located in 'large towns'. the proportion of the religious bodies as a whole was only 43.1 per
cent. Of other denominations only the largely immigrant Roman catholics were more urban­
ized (Calculated from 1851 Census of Great Britain. Report and Tables on Religious Worship
in England and Wales. PP. LXXXIX. 1852-3. Table 1", pp. ccliii -cclxxii). The regional bias
towards the North and Midlands is evident in J.D. Gay, The Geography of Religion in
Rn",lnnd (London. 1971), pp. 181-3,317.
lonesl, 'Change of Surrounding Influences in the Ministerial Life'. Christian
Teacher n.s. I (18391. pp. 129-30.
19Ibid IV (1838), p. 116.
 354 Graeme Davison
minister's wife and worker among the poor in Manchester during the
1830s, portrayed thll kind of intelligent and godly workingman that the
missionaries looked for, but rarely found, in the person of Job Legh, the
artisan-insect collectpr in her novel Mary Barton.
By the early nineteenth century the Paleyan paradigm had begun to
outgrow its original frame of reference and had extended itself from the
natural universe to civilized society. In 1831 Rev. Richard Whately
succeeded his friend, the Whig economist Nassau Semor, as Professor of
Political Economy at Oxford and. in his Introductory Lectures, attempted
'a continuation of Paley's "Natural Theology", extending to the body­
politic some such views as his respecting the natural'.20 The example
Whately chose to illustrate his case - a social counterpart of Paley's
famous watch - was the provisioning of the city of London. 'Let anyone',
he suggested, 'propose to himself the problem of supplying in daily
provisions of all kinds such a city as our own metropolis, containing above
a million inhabitants. Let him imagine himself a head commissary,
entrusted with the office of furnishing to this enormous host their daily
rations.' The city's very size, the variety of commodities, the fluctuations
of demand and variability of supply would impose impossible burdens on
'the most experienced and intelligent of commissaries.' Yet, amazingly,
'this object is accomplished far better than it could be by any effort of
human wisdom, through the agency of men, who think each of nothing
beyond his own interest.... In the provisioning of London', Whately
concluded, 'there are the same marks of contrivance and design, with a
view to a beneficient end, as we are accustomed to admire (when our
attention is drawn to them by the study of Natural Theology) in the
anatomical structure of the body, and the instincts of brute creation."l
T'J London's wonderful ability to feed itself remained a favourite illustration
0~,(.mo!!11.£J!ful!!'!1~LthJ:~\!&!1out the century. At its outset SIr GIlbert
tHane had observed 'the regular, aaequate and fair supply of animal food
to Ithe I metropolis', as silent, spontaneous and unsuperintended as 'the
circulation of the blood or any other process of nature'.~2 And in the mid
1850s George Dodd, author of The Food of London, reviewed the astonish­
ing variety of fresh provisions which fast railways had brought within
reach of London's markets and contrasted 'the harmonious action of this
delicate machine' with the bungling of commissaries in the Crimea. 2J
Whately'S brief venture into political economy was but a stepping
stone to higher things - in 1831 the Whigs promoted him to the see of
Dublin - and his protege, William Cooke Taylor, was left to draw out the
implications of his b-conomic aoctrines. Taylor's Natural History 0
Society, ,written with Whateley's 'assistance and superintenaance',
~-~'" appeared in 1840. Since society, in their view, was a natural phenomenon,
the development of society - or civilization must have a natural
""E. Jane Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately. DD (London. 1866), I.
pp.66-7.
2lfnt rodllctory Lectures oil Political Economy {4th edn. London. 18401. pp. 60-4.
nSir Gilbert Blnne. Enqlliry illto the Causes and Remedies of the Late ant! Present
SC(Jrcity and Hil4h Price of Proo;"iolls in a Letter to the Hi"ht Hall. Earl Spencer (2nd edn,
London. 1817). in Pamphleteer. IX. p. 271.
Meaning of the City (Grand Rapids, 1973).
tJ(London. 1856). pp. 1-2.
28Ibid., pp. 2-3.
The City as a Natural System 355
history. By 'civilization' they meant simply the values of their own
supremely confident urban middle class: physical strength, longevity,
inventiveness, family purity, Protestant morality and, above all, progress.
'We may fairly concl ude', Taylor wrote, 'that the primary element of civili­
zation . " is progress, not from one place to another, but from one
condition to another, and always in advance'.24 Natural history, written
within this teleological framework, offered a clearer avenue of develop­
ment for a Paleyan social science than the possibly discomforting investi­
gation of contemporary city life. Taylor's Natural History ofSociety, with
its appeal to the Protestant virtues, stands at the head of a long line of
western theories of 'modernization' extending through the social
evolutionists and down to American students of 'under-development' in
the 1960s. In 1842 Taylor himself advanced from Dublin to Manchester
where he found a congenial home as an editor and publicist for the Anti­
Corn Law League. 25
But the vogue for natural history persisted and in 1843 Dr Robert
Vaughan adopted Taylor's doctrj;tlQII as. the basis forhis remarkable
~omparativ~"u.:!.i!lll! histor~!The Age of Great Cities.
Vaughan had been ffilnister since 1825 ortheKenslngton"COngreglitional
Church and in 1834 became Professor of History at University College. In
advancing his claims for a scientific'general history', Vaughan had boldly
enquired why 'those laws of classification, which have been of most
momentous import in the development of science' should not also be
applied to human history.26 So the history of cities, for example, 'as a
natural part of the body politic', might obey natural laws and exhibit a
providential design. 'We have our Babylons', he remarked, blithely
sweeping aside 3000 years of prophetic tradition,. 'from the same will of
providence that has given to us our Bibles '.27 The present 'Age of Great
Cities' exemplified the triumph of liberty, intelligence, commerce, the
family and the Protestant religion over the forces of barbarism,
militarism, feudalism, 'domestic slavery' and superstition. a progression
which Vaughan illustrated with a synoptic account of the European city
from the Greek city-state to the manufacturing metropolis. Unhappily
this process remained incomplete. for the Corn Law crisis had revealed
how potent remained the influence of feudalism and superstition. Britain
was seemingly poised between an old aristocratic and a new commercial
order of society. 'In no other land', Vaughan claimed, 'is there a
commercial power embodying so fully the spirit of thll age in this respect,
and in no Protestant country beside is there an aristocracy or an
established church retaining so much of the form and spirit of remote
times. '28
24The Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized State: An essay towards
discovering the origin and course of human improvement (London, 1840), pp. 4-5.
25DNB; N. McCord, The Anti-Com Law League (London. 1958). pp. 124. 185.
260n the Study of General History, an introductory lecture delivered in the University of
London (London. 1834). p. 28.
27The AgeofGreat Cities, or Modem Society Viewed in its Relation to Intelligence. Morals
and Religion (London, 1843), pp. 5, 77. On biblical views of the city see Jacques Ellul, The
 356 Graeme Davison
Vaughan's special ecclesiastical position helps to account for his
optimistic view of the city. For Disse lin a ainst a Church
-----r? establishm~nt the cit was meed a haven of liber
rehgIous strugg es 0 t e ear y
he political and
s a rought a resurgence of aristo­
cratic and clerical pressure upon Dissenting congregations in rural areas.
'Dwellers in large cities', reported the Congregational Home Missionary
Society in 1841, 'are little aware of the power wielded by certain parties in
small towns, and in the rural districts, against freedom of religious
worshlp'.2g In Leicester, where Dissenters had been imprisoned for
refusing to pay tithes, Edward Miallied a vigorous campaign against the
State Church. A member of the Complete Suffrage Union, Mialliooked for
an alliance between the middle and lower classes on the basis of the
People's Charter and the disestablishment of the Church. The constitution
and religious system of the country, Miall argued, were in 'an unnatural
state of dislocation'.30 Dr Vaughan, on the other hand, belonged to the
Congregationalists' more conservative, London-based wing, relatively
insulated from the attacks of the Establishment and directing their
mission toward 'the higher and more intelligent classes'. (His own hearers
at Kensington included a number of 'persons connected with the station
and culture of general society', such as Lord Morpeth and the Duchess of
Sutherland. 31) Miall's attempt to foment a radical attack on the Establish­
ment cut across Vaughan's upward-looking mission. The Age of Great
Cities, written at the height of this controversy, affirmed that the political
and religious constitution of the country, so far from being in 'unnatural
dislocation', were naturally progressing towards the civic and commercial
liberty exemplified by the great city.
'The history of great cities', Vaughan wrote, 'is pre-eminently the
history of social experiment.'32 While he has little to say about urban
population, geography or economics, Vaughan's analysis of the city's role
in the generation and diffusion of ideas foreshadows a later liberal tradi­
tion of urban sociology. By focusing on urban culture, he was able to
~\ minimize, and largely explain away, such disturbing symptoms as
poverty, crime and disease. The growth of urban problems, he argued, was
-magnifle01lyincre~encies of publicity. 'Our facilities of communi­
cation and publicity - as in the multiplication and improvement of roads,
and the increase of newspapers - have tended to make the evil of society
known as it was not formerly, and as it is not known at present in any other
country in Europe.'33 But by making urban evils better known, these
29Memorial by the Directors of the Home Missionary Society to 11 th Annual Assembly of
the Congregational Union. Congregational Magazine. V (1841), p. 899.
3DJ. Waddington. Congregational History (5 vols .. London. 1869-80). IV, pp. 552-78; A.
Life of Edward Miall (London, 1884), p. 52-5.
Stoughton. Congregationalism in the Court Suburb (London, 1883), pp. 64-6; J.
Thompson. Lancashire Independent College 1843-1893 Jubilee Memorial Volume
(Manchester, 1893), p. 73; British Quarterly Review II (1845), p. 124; Waddington. op.cit.,
IV, p. 319.
32Vaughan. Age of Great Cities. p. 6l.
33Ibid.• p.253. Vaughan's arguments may be instructively compared with those of
modern liberal theorists of urban disorder such as Edward Banfield. The Unheavenly City
The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (Boston. 1968).
The City as a Natural System 357
agencies also helped to combat them. Like his predecessor Malthus,
Vaughan conceived of civilization as a moving equilibrium between
material advance and moral improvement. 'In the moral world, as in the
physical', he wrote, 'the true equilibrium of things is realized by the action
of opposite forces. The sphere of our responsibility widens with every
increase of intelligence, wealth and association; but it does not widen as
opening new sources of temptation, more than as presenting new
considerations on the side of resisting temptation.'a::"Crime, he conceded,
. might initially increase as cities expanded; but new m~aI1S .Qtm:!:ty.e.ntWJt
woulasoon- emerge to-counter~'rt::l5 Thus wealth, knowledge and .free
assocI~g9n~=tne:qtialities he chIefly associated with urban life - would
eE"?.~~e re!lledies for the city's temporary ills.
II
ThE:)_tE!le,()I~gical
assumptions of ~hl;lnaturl;\l.historialls Qfsociety rested in
part upon the popular analogy between the.city,gr the_ 'bodY' PQlf9:J{j!l1d
£llehuillajiJ?Qqy.Cities, like bodies, were wholes greater than their parts;
they underwent processes of growth, change and decay; and they
exhibited subtle mechanisms of adjustment or homeostasis, which
regulated their social health just as temperature, circulation, digestion
and respiration were maintained in the body. Many early investigators of
town life were medical men - like W.P. Alison, Thomas Southwood
Smith, Neil Arnott, William Farr, J.P. Kay and William Duncan or
were lay students of physiology - like Edwin Chadwick and Charles
Bray.:l6 So it was likely that theIr conceptIons of the city, and their '.
methods of socIal mqUlry, would be strongly mfluenced by contemporary.#
~pnYliiolQgy..ariibnediCal.practi,.e.7-_ .
It happened that the early nineteenth century was a time of critical
_c.h/l;l1Ee.il1.111£l<lica.I~.h2.I:l~ht~n his provocative book, The BirlTi of the
Clinic, Michel Foucault invites us to consider these changes, not as
random mnovatlOns, but as a patterned transformation of the structures
governing medical practice. The medical revolution represented 'a new
carving up of things' - a new way of classifying medical knowledge, a new
way of locating disease in the human body. and a new way of confining the
sick person. (For Foucault, 'the birth of the clinic' is one aspect of a broader
transformation of thought and institutions that also included the births of
the asylum and the prison. 37)
In the eighteenth century, according to Foucault., diseases were iden­
tified according to the way in which they presented themselves to the eye
of the physician rather than by reference to some independent classifica­
tion of disease. Like diseases presented like appearances. A particular
disease was not identified with a definite seat or location within the body
34Vaughan. Age of Great Cities. p. 255.
;J5Ibid, p. 250.
;jti Edwin Chadwick? , . A Short Sketch of E.C.·s Career' (n.d.!: Catalogue to Chadwick's
11836) Chadwick Papers; Charles Bray. Phases ()[Opinion und Experi"",'" durifl# a
w/obiography (London, 1884). pp. 23. 4H-52.
of the Clinic An Arcirae%!fY (London. 1974). p. xviii;
and see also his Madness alld Civilization, A in the Age a[ Reas,,!! (New
York. 1965) and Disciplille and Punish The Birth Prisoll- (London.

 358 Graeme Davison
but on the contrary, in accordance with the doctrine of 'sympathies', it
might circulate or radiate throughout the body, exhibiting similar
'qualities' in widely separated organs. Finally, the social environment of
medical practice, like the physician's conceptual field and the 'map' of
disease in the body, was extensively, rather than intensively, defined. The
sick person belonged in the community, among his family rather than in
'the privileged region' of the hospital while medical practice consisted of a
'generalized presence of doctors' rather than the specialized and
circumscribed clinic.
Around the turn of the nineteenth century t.hese conceptions of disease
and of the human body underwent an important change. 'Disease',
Foucault writes, 'is no longer a bundle of characters disseminated here and
there over the surface of the body ..., it is a set of forms and deformations,
figures and accidents and of displaced. destroyed, or modified elements
bound together in sequence according to a geography that can be followed
step by step. '3B The body now presented itself to the doctor as a three­
dimensional mechanical system. Disease came to be identified with
specific lesions {'deformations'; spatially located within the body. (Hence
the contemporary enthusiasm for the practice of morbid anatomy which
exposed the inner structures of the body to direct observation.) In its
social as ect, medicine began to arran e itself around the institution of the
~ clinic as a place were SIC eo e cou d be c ass! Ie . treate an 0 serve
WIt a new scientific precISIOn.
--'These-Changes in medical perception, from an extensive or topograph­
ical to an intensive or anatomical approach, were reflected in the inter­
pretation of urban life. As conceptions of the human body altered, so did
ideas of the 'body-politic'. 'Medical to 0 a 'he rudimentar science
of environmental health w IC 1 fench and British provincial octors too
::h7 up in the late eighteenth century,"dlscerned patterns of disease,in the land­
4 ~ sea eratheras h siciansreaditss m surface of the boQy.
and interpreted them accor mg to the same principles of 'sympathy' and
'correspondence '.39 The particular combination of 'qualities' - moistness
or dryness, hotness or coldness etc. - which indicated the presence of a
disease in the body also governed its geographical appearance. Each
locality, according to its terrain, climate, vegetation, local industries and
customs, had its distinctive maladies which medical topographers
assiduously listed and described. In accordance with the wonderful
economy of nature, each locality not only had its own diseases but its own
cures. In his 'Hints for a Medical Topography of Great Britain' (1809),
William Royston testified that:
Those who have considered the visible creation with the eye of science,
;l~F()I1Calllt. Birth of the Clinic, p. 136. See also the parallel of N.D. Jewson,
'The of the Sick Man in Medical Cosmology. ,Sociology X (1976),
pp.
:J90 n medical topography see ibid .. p. :)1; Edward Shorter. The Making of the Modem
Family ILondon, 1977,. pp. 20-1; and for contemporary surveys see review of Douglas
'Medical Topography of Upper Canada', Edinhurgh MedIcal and Sur!(ical Journal XVI
(18201. pp. 566-8; 'Sketch of a Plan for a "Memoirs of Medical Topography" " ibid., XVII
(821). pp. 159-83.
The City as a Natural System 359
or the feeling of philosophy, either in the aggregate or in detail cannot
but have observed with what beneficial views, and what perfect skill,
the parts are adjusted; and with what provident care adapted to the
whole. The powerful remedies we have just noticed, are not to be sought
for in remote regions, under the hazard of precarious supplies, but are
presented to us in every field and hedge-row....
So, from the very hillside infested by venomous snakes, the skilful phy­
sician might pluck an antidote, A plant which was poisonous to eat might
nevertheless furnish a healing ointment. 4o
Medical topography was a science well adapted to the rural setting and
empirical outlook of provincial medicine. But, like its sister natural L
theology. it was less suited to the complex and artifiCial envlrOnment9f a
~ city. In his 'Medicill Topography of London' (1813) G.W. Burrows
adressed himself to 'the alterations produced on health by an artificial
state of society', citing in particular the effects of sewers, the combustion
of fuel, local industries and customs. Despite these environmental changes
he remained confident that nature - though the movements of wind and
tide - would dissipate any hazards to the population. 41 Other writers, like
Dr Chisholm of Bristol, were less confident, fearing that 'the unnatural
state in which the inhabitants of manufacturing towns were placed' might
upset 'the due balance of their systems'. 42 Still others, like J.K. Walker of
Huddersfield. believed that the economic conditions which produced the
industrial town. with its threat to health, would also provide a remedy. 'It
is fortunate', he wrote 'that the same foreign intercourse that has
imported the bane, has furnished us, at the same time, with many valuable
antidotes.'43 So civilization, which initially upset the 'due balance' of
nature, might eventually establish a new equilibrium.
he effect of urbaniza ion on human health was a uestion that medical
top0E!:.~could.,pose, but not cone usr~:.eJ.YJill~. In cities, where many
K:fii.Os of people ana aCbVltleS;- andmany different diseases flowed
together, it was impossible by mere enumeration and description to dis­
cover their interrelationships. 44 Only by more analytical methods, akin to
those of the new clinicians. could the structures of urban disease be
exposed. The transformation of medical topography in~
..was a adual process but its dimensions are well illustr careers
-#~utstan njL!!1ve~tl&:~!_..._: Alison and Thomas Southwoo..
"--'At the University of Edinburgh,..§t.iIUh.~..p.r~mie.r..medjcal ~
..Britain during the early nineteenth century, the study of physiology pro­
ceeded in a continuous dialogue with mental and moral philosophy. W.P.
40H. Smith, 'A Brief Sketch of the Medical Topography of Salisbury'. London Medica~
Surgical and Pharmaceutical Repository VI (1816), p. 108 n.; W. Royston 'Hints for a
Medical Topography of Great Britain', Medical and Physical Journal XXV (1809), p. 13.
4lLondon Medical Repository I (1814). pp. 80-90.
42C. Chisholm, 'On the Statistical Pathology of Bristol and Clifton, Gloucester·Shire',
Edinburgh Medical Journal XIII (1817), pp. 265-93.
43'Medical Topography of Huddersfield', London Medical Repository X (1818), pp. 1-14.
44Foucault touches on this problem in 'The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century'
in Michel Foucault, PowerlKrwwledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977
edited by Colin Gordon (New York, 1980), pp. 175-6.
360 qraeme Davison
Alison, then the most influential of its medical professors, had been a
protege of the philosopher Dugald Stewart and his own physiological
doctrines - notably his 'theory of vital affinity' rested upon the
foundation of Stewart's philosophy. Just as society, in Stewart's view,
was knit together by bonds of 'sympathy', so, in Alison's, were the
functions of the human body sustained by a principle of 'vital affinity'
distinct from the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. Like his famous
lawyer brother Archibald, W.P. Alison was a patriarchal Tory and a
thorough opponent of laissez-faire, whether it appeared overtly in the New
Poor Law or disguised as anti-contagionist medicine. As a practical
demonstration of his principles, medical and political, he had taken the
lead in establishing a medical dispensary in a poor section of the New
Town. Under Alison, therefore, medical philanthropy and social enquiry
were brought together around cognate views of the human body, and of
human society, as networks of sympathetic communication. 45
Alison's physiology and medical practice thus represented a transi­
tional stage between old topographical and new clinical approaches. For
the full development of the clinical approach to urban social enquiry we
must turn to Alison's former pupil, Thomas Southwood Smith. In per­
sonality, social ba<;:kground and professional outlook they made an
instructive contrast. While Alison, the young professor, attended the
preaching of his father, Rev. Archibald ('Taste') Alison, at the fashionable
Episcopal Church, the student Southwood Smith ministered to a fugitive
congregation of Unitarians in the Cowgate. In Scotland the Unitarians
suffered fiercer persecution than in England and their embattled pastor
became a strong contender for religious toleration. 46 But ardent Dissenter
though he was, Smith never became a social or political rebeL As a medical
student he had been entranced by 'the surprising adjustments and
harmonies' of the human body and, in his Illustrations of the Divine
Government (1816), he extended the principles of natural theology from
physiology to morals, arguing that human society exhibited similar
'adjustments' and 'harmonies'. Even 'poverty, dependence and servitude',
he contended, served a providential end. Few of his fellow Unitarians
would have pursued the argument from design to such extreme
necessarian conclusions and Smith himself would later repudiate some of
Medical Journal LXXXVII (1859-60). pp. 469-86;
Ji,amDUrIlf!
of Vital Affinity. as illustrated by recent dis·
coveries in Organic Chemistry', Transactions ofthe Royal Society ofEdinburgh XVI (1845),
pp. 165-88; idem., 'Defence of the Doctrine of Vital Affinity', ibid. XX (1853), pp. 385-400;
idem., 'Remarks on the Review of Mr Stewart's Dissertation in the Quarterly Review',
Blackwood's Magazine II (1817). pp.57-61; 159-65; idem., Observations on the
Management of the Poor in Scotland and its Effects on the Health of the Great Towns
(Edinburgh, 1840). On the general context of these ideas see Christopher Lawrence, 'The
Nervous System and Society in the Scottish Enlightement' in Barry Barnes and Steven
Shapin. editors, Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (London, 1979),
pp.19-36.
46C.L. Lewes, Southwood Smith, p. 10; A. McWhirter, 'Unitarianism in Scotland',
Records of the Scottish Church History Society XIII (1959), p. 119; Monthly Repository
VII 1(1813), p. 539; Thomas Southwood Smith, The Probable Influence of the Development
of the Human Mind on the Future Progress of Knowledge and Goodness. A Discourse
(Lonlion. 1818), pp. 13). 19.
The City as a Natural System 361
the book' s conclusions. 47 But the almost obsessi ve interest in mechanisms
of adjustment and integration remained with him and exerted a powerful
influence on his later medical and sanitary writings.
In 1817 Southwood Smith returned to England and, after combining
medicine and preaching for three years at Yeovil, beeame a physician to
the Fever Hospital and the Eastern Dispensary in London. Little is known
of his medical activities in the East End but by 1825, when he contributed
an article on 'Conta ion and Sanitar Laws' to the Westmin$tf!I1.lfJuiew,
he was evidentlY-2.n t e rmges 0 en m_.s circle and something of an
-·~,,-uffiQr~lllik\nili;..cJisease. A year later he proposeoa course of lectures
on physiology for laymen at University College. arguing that 'all real
improvement in the moral and social condition of man must be founded on
a knowledge of his physical and mental constitution. ""
Over the next 'th wrote a number of 0 ular medical works
. . pllli conyg!1l!Q.~ to ent amism and the clinica
. outlook. The teleolQ.&(:~1 role which he haaonce-~_§~!g:Il@ to provldence'
wasmcreasin I occu ie06 -tne titiIitaifiul re-asure rinci' d of
.Ill<;:~xjs.tence' •.he...w.r.o.te in .Is ..hit.Qspp Y..,9 .. _.eg(th.L_'ilL~D.imaL!,t~is.t~
ence; the end of aniro~J.!:\~is.t~nc.eisJientiente;!(ii~~~:mce; the end of sentient
exist~nC:;Jl.i ~p.k§'sJJrable existence; the. j)1J..dgUif?.the~eIore is eni9.Y.!llenL'.:'~
He became an enthusiastic follower of clinical medicine,-lncluding the
practice of morbid anatomy, Unlike Alison, who had always treated
patients 'more after symptoms than after names?O the clinicians viewed
the body as a mechanical system and sought to locate disease in specific
internal lesions. 'Disease', Smith wrote in an article advocating morbid
anatomy, 'is denoted by disordered function; disordered function cannot
be understood without a knowledge of structur~; structure cannot be
understood unless it is examined. ">I All the functions of the body con­
formed to the laws of physics and chemistry and most were concerned with
the circulation and chemical interaction of fluids. 'All the great actions of
life', he claimed, 'are concerned with them. Their int1uence over all the
cesses which are constantly going on in the economy is so great, that if the
body may be called a machine, as from the admirable adjustment of its
parts it may be termed with striking appropriateness, it may at least with
denominated a laboratory, in which the most important and
extensive chemical actions are taking place every instant. ",:1 It was this
interchange between a physical agent and a living organ that constituted
the vital process ..All vital processes are either processes of supply or pro·
cesses of waste.... Every moment old particles are carried out of the
system; every moment new particles are introduced into it_ The matter of
-17 Preface to the fourth edition of II/ustrations oft.he Diuille Gouemment as quoted Lewes.
p. 13; Illustrations {1st edn, Glasgow. 18161, pp. 78-9; for Unitarian criticisms and Smith's
response see Monthly Repository XVII (1822), pp. 83-6, 165-6.
48Westminster Review III (1825). pp_ 1:54-67,499-530; 'Proposal for Physiology '119261,
Chadwick Papers.
49The Philo.,ophy of Health: or an expo.,itioll of the physical ami melltal COTIstitliti(!Il (}f
man Ilstedn. London, 18331, p. 74.
50British and Foreign Medical Review III (19371, p. 19:{,
51'The Use of the Dead to the Living', Westminster Reviel<', II 11824). p. 61.
5:1Allimal i'hysiolor;y ILondon. 1829). p. 12.

 362 Graeme Davison
which the body is compo~ed is thus in a state of perpetual flux. 'r,:) This con­
ception of the body as a dynamic system, perpetually in flux, constantly
assimilating new particles and eliminating old ones, had important
implications for Smith's view of man's moral and social condition, and in
particular for his view of urban society.
In the third, and best-know!!!-.ppase of Southwood Smith's
career'~ sanitary reIonn - this conception of the human bodyoecame
"the basis foraprogra-m-m1nrrfar oreaching urban enquiry. Althou h he was
, latEl,LQyersbadowed byth.e~_~~. - _'T' ucrats Chadwlck and Simon,
'./.Wn
. . . . ;'
c;.""'-) Southv.ro.,Od Smith is entitled to' De regarded.~.~Jhe Jntellectual founder of
the sanitary movement. It waif11cwno:flrSt proposed that the sanitary
" economy of the tQW14:iike that of t e human bod" conslsted in the
..
_._
-crynamic interchange between living or anisms an t e l r , ' .
~= fils process was sustamed by the constant circulation of
<®]QS aI!~Lt.h~J';QntiDllOllS replenishment of vital functions by the introduc·
tion of fresh 2..a.r.ticl~§..9..ud the elimina.tl.On of decayeg:or wasted oneS. A
neatUiyCity permitted the free circulation of air and water, the efhclent
combusGon"OJ"'JiieI.andjlieecoriom.icaTal~posal of waste. Just as the
physiCian sought to identify-thos~Tesions'wmcl11i:i1paired the functioning
<"oI~:.!ln:; b9.<!y.~~gO "'tl:m~ .~n~!~I~ f2..c..':l~c:L...9'!!' .._ those deformed ...
&tructures - such ?&JeebleWJiteI.sup.m~,-cI9gged drains, crowded
~tsana "tenements, smokin fire laces and furnaces-::whjs!:L$e­
v.ent~" .. Le_~ ..!cwnt circulation of th~cit:..Y.'~vi~~l.!:lEld_s.: __l1._eoo,Uley recog·
nized a direct parallel between the 'internal' and 'external' aetiology of
disease: as a patient became feverous if his blood was overcharged with the
. products of decomposed organic matter, so, if the city's 'arteries' were
\ piled high with garbage, an epidemic might erupt.'"
\ .The leading characteristi ' h s' nitar movement - the enthusiasm
"/\ ~mor I anatom the opposition to quarantme, teo sessIOn with
V 2.tr.Q.~~_...c.le.ansing an ven lawn, e mterest III statistical
!El~,~urem~.=~:w.er.~.gr,o.unded in a consistent view of the u ~y
and oltne city as natural.J?.Ystems. . us t e c ash between Southwood
S'riiTEh and W.P. ATison'on the"qti-estlo'n of the contagious transmission of
fever was symbolic of more fundamental phiiosophical and physiological
differences. The intellectual coherence of the sanitary idea goes a long way
towards explaining the passion with which it was held, and the speed with
which medical opinion swung to its support. In contrast to the loose, static
framework of medical topography, in which the city and its diseases were
linked in indeterminate reciprocity, it specified a definite organic relation­
ship between the inciuence of disease and the physical structure of the
city. (William Farr's rule that mortality increased according to the sixth
'.:I'Lectures on Animal Economy at the London Institution' Monthly Repositury VI!
(l833}, p. 51.
""See his variolls works on epidemic disease notably A Treatise Ol/ Fe"er (London, 1830).
P£). :l·IH-9: 'Ht'port on some of t he physical causes of sickness and mortality to which the
,lI'e particubrly exposed. ,'. Fourth Annuall{eport of the Poor Law
A. no. 2. Pt>. XXV III 118:37 -81. pp. 83,-6. Epidemic., Considered
'loll nature (Ind to clinulte and cI'vilizutiull n~dil1burgh, 1856),
contrast ing physiologies of Alison and Southwood Smith have a large bearing on their
similarly contrasting views of epidemic disease; sep M. Pelling. vp.t'il .. pp, 141-61.
The City as a Natural System 363
root of density was the most ambitious attempt to quantify the
relationship. 55) Sanitary science, like clinical medicine, re resented 'a new
carving up Qf..J. m s. e lagnostlc . m:y .
~icians.-- e rou h morbid anatomy and the djnic, cJJ;
sanitarians att.!illlPted..to emulateJlirougnthedissection gfyital statistics_ \
,gnd the.....mapping...of.leYeLarrd cholera areas. The statistical movement '
which grew up contemporaneously in British cities may be seen as a
further development of the clinical outlook. As sick people were subjected
to the careful classification and observatiofiOl' the clinic, andc:;.r:iriiiilliLS..t.o"
the constant. SUperVlSIOn ofthe-SenthariiTte- pario-p'ticon, so did
stat1StiClans seelZto un
co t, chissifY',locateanofliereforeifiiiira.Ee.'tll st,
eva
inonymous and urirwy urban masses. 56 ny"dIViding the city into
statlshcaTunit§:anacountmg their mhaoltants the statisticians had
taken the first step towards controlling their physical and moral health.
'Those who have observed the habits of the labouring population', wrote
Edwin Chadwick in defending the census, 'will be aware that the
sentiment of belonging to a country, or a place, of being under the law or
government of a country is indelibly impressed on their minds by their
being known to be written down, enrolled or registered as belonging to
it. ',,;
The clinical paradigm also had its attractions to doctors as representa'
tives of an embryonic professional class. In one of his early sermons, on the
text 'Give me neither poverty nor riches', Southwood Smith had sung the
praises of the educated middle class, comparing their disinterested
intelligence with the self-seeking of the rich and the ignorance of the poor. 5H
",The sanitarians as a grou~ame to regard therrlselve~,-rather in the style
of Saint-Simon's 'scientists', 1;l_~"_tl:!.~J:.~chrilcT~"...2U.I!ti9§~Ociet~ fij)
equippe~ by.thelr.. ~'p'~c.l!'l1.~dgeand.~~vestigateaiiiI )
rrect ltSills. TIielr view . teaSe. as~
s ecific hysical defects, mirrored.Jh!§...techI!9.9.'~tic view 0 elr SOCl
J:9le, just as t elr qua 1 Ie attachment to the idea of tlie city as a natural
system may be said to reflect their 'uneasy' or 'middling' social status. 59
The prolific uses of the clinical paradigm are well illustrated among
Southwood Smith's fellow sanitarians. In a work on elementary physics,
Neil ~h!!~ ingeniously reversed the body-city 'IDialogy: ....­
We know that as the Thames water spreads over London in pipes, to
supply the inhabitants generally, and to answer the particular purposes
of brewers, bakers, tanners and others, and is then in great part
r,r"Causes of High Mortality in Town Districts', Appendix to the Fifth Annuallteport of
the Registrar·General, P. P. XXI 1/8431, pp.83-6.
''''Compare Foucault, 'The Eye of Power" in PowerlKnuwledf<e. p. 151.
57 'Memorandum on Statistics. 1851'. Chadwick Papers.
seSermons of Thomas Southwood Smith (Dr Williams's Library I.
&~Saint·Simon had defined the role of the "scientists' in his new SOCiety in words that might
readily be applied to the sanitarians: 'they will establish laws of social hygiene for the social
body. and in their hands politics will become the complement of the science of men' (as
quoted Keith Taylor. editor. Henri Saint,Simo/l 11760-1825) Selected Writings (}n Sciel/ce,
Industry and Sucial OrganizatiOIl (London. 1975, p. 267). Also compare R.S. Neale, Class
and Ide(}/rwy ill the Nineteenth Centary (London, 1972), pp. 21-40 and Foucault. The
Politics of Health'. p. 177.
 364 Graeme Davison
returned to where the current sweeps away the impurities; so, nearly, in
the human body, does the blood spread in the arteries from a central
vessel in every direction, to nourish all the parts and to supply such
material of secretion to the liver, the kidneys, the stomach and other
viscera, and returns from these by the veins, towards the heart and
lungs, to be purified, and to have its waste replenished, that it may
again renew its course.6()
In his later physiological writings, Arnott considered the body as a system
for the generation and conservation of heat, a perspective which he also
extended to the city. iii His tract on The Smoke-Consuming and Fuel­
Saving Fireplace made a remarkable analysis of London's fuel economy
including global estimates of the losses incurred through inefficient com­
bustion in the form of smoke, waste fuel and defective heating and
ventilation. By adopting his own patented fireplace, Londoners might
annually save over two and a half million pounds in unnecessary cleaning,
a further million in wasted fuel and as many as six or seven hundred lives a
week in the winter months. In his systematic analysis of urban energy con­
sumption and pollution, Arnott anticipated the modern energy debate.
'Coal', he wrote in a prescient passage, 'is a part of our national wealth, of
which, whatever is once used can never, like corn or any other produce of
industry, be renewed or replaced.... To consume coal wastefully or
unnecessarily, then, is not a slight improvidence but a serious crime
against future generations. '6~
For the fullest extension of sa!1itary s~ieJJcj3.frQmQlil.ill!osis to cure we
/ " ,~,//:-- must turn to the urban h -sielan par excellence. Edwin Chadwic. uring
:7
.. the 1840s his correspo ce~ts e 0
tive projects. all directed to the one unchanging goal the reconstruction
of the modern city as a natural system. In contrast to Whately's interest in
. ~ the feeding of London, Chadwick was concerned - some would say
--r .' obsessed - with l~.Q!>V'~r~~LI!rQ!;~,ss> Qie elimination of the city's waste.
_He had learned of the finding of the German orgamc c~emlst, J ust~s
L~ig, that the che~~t~Q.nstituents of human exc1:!ll!!enfwere preclse~1
those re Ulred to fortif the soil for an optimal crop of food. the first rule 0
goo usbandry, accordin to LeI 19. was 0 ensqr.e........s: re urn 0 -.-!1:'
....- ~sure to £IiQ:eei~ Yet in mo ern cities this 'great natural law' was
'~ S£\. om observed: ~wage was slmp!Ldeposited in cesspools and stag~
. nant stream§.....so inmQy~r:Isli~gJ!grl~l!ltgr..!L.and!l!tg.angering the town­
.. dwellers. G4 Chadwick's mission was to re-establish this natural law in the
I. p. 482.
Progress. from the sa vag" state to the highest ci/Jili~atiol1 yet attained
(London, 1861). p. 39.
62The Smoke·Consuming and Fuel·Saving Fireplace (London. 1855). pp. 2-3.
6C)J. Liebig, Orffanic Chemi,>try its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology (London.
1840). pp. 197-201; idem.• Leiters on the Utilization of the M~trop()lita/! Sewage (London.
1865), pp.41-2; Lyon Play fair to Edwin Chadwick n,d. iI84:1': 13 October 1844.
Chadwick Papers; M. Pelling. 01'. cil .. ch. 4. On Chadwick's psychological preoccupations
see Richard Schoenwald. 'Training Urban Man', H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff. eds .. The
Victorian City /rnaffes alld Realities (London. 1973). II. pp, 669-92.
MEdwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labourilll( Populatio/! of
Great Britain edited by M.W. Flinn (Edinburgh. 1965). pp. 99-166; Cullen. op. cit .. ch. 14.
The City as a Natural System 365
It is ascertained Ihe wrote to one of his supporters I that the supply of
gas and the supply of water may be carried on together: that enough of
waste heat escapes from the gas works of a town to work the steam
engines for its supply of water, and the steam engines, for pumping such
a town as Athens, would ... suffice to supply tepid baths for the whole
of the province.... All these wonders shall be carried out;J:,he Greek
shall be rescued from..truu;YLannX.2f...!!!th and the pestilence of decom""':'
- posmg ammal and vegetable refuse, he Shan
be enabled to live longer in
the land of his fathers. he shall have a clear and perpetual spring of
water always clear and always cool, carried into his house and ready at
his command if he will pay sixpence for it, or two pence per week. ... [;6
Such schemes flowed from Chadwick's brain as freely as the waters of
Athens. Waste of every kind would be remade into wealth: factory boilers _
would be !~EEed to.p~()yide.h9J .qlltl1_sJQ!:.J4.e,han<l~~o~dung .a~d house·
hold refuse woUld be converted in . r nd otatoes. BySIGffuI engineer­
mg.t:he ecqnomy Qo. nature :w.QYl~estored with ar r e CIty s
lungs. larger windows to light its houses and traffic control to improve its
"-motor functions. 67
It fell to Chadwlck's faithful disciple, Benjamin Ward Richardson. to
present the most; complete blueprint of the 'sanitary city. In his
'Hygeia' - an ideal 'city of health' - the 100,000 inhabitants were
housed in individual cottages raised upon brick arches, so that air could
circulate freely about them. Their chimneys were joined by common shafts
to smoke and soot-consuming fireplaces. They rode to work in the strictly
segregated industrial zones on underground railways. The clothes they
wore had been washed at a municipal laundry while the water they washed
them in had first been purified at a municipal distillation plant. Even the
air they breathed was pumped into their homes from a municipal ozone
generator. fill By the application of intelligence, wealth and
technology - the first fruits of industrial civilization- the city was thus
1;5'Memo of Principles of Political Economy and Administration first developed by Mr
Chadwick'. Chadwick Papers; see also letters opposing intermittent water supply
(Chadwick to Brotherton. 24 May. 1845) and advocating simultaneous connection of water
and sewerage (Chadwick to Lord Francis Egerton, 2 April. 1846 and to Philip Holland. 26
January. 1846). For a general account of the Town Improvements Company see R.A. Lewis,
Edll,in f'/wd1l'ick and the Public Health Movemel1t 1&'12-19.54 (London. 1952), pp. 106-23.
66Chadwick to Charles Bracebridge. 5 August. 1844.
67Chadwick to A. Melly 9 December. 184;,; Chadwick to Lyon Playfair :1 Jun"" 1844:
Chadwick to Henry Hobhouse. 22 August. 1844; Chadwick to Sir Robert Peel. 18 March.
1845. Chadwick to Philip Holland. 10 December. 1845.
bHHygeia, the City of Health (London. 1876); idem.. Health ar.d Life (London. 1878),
pp. 177-84: James H. Cassedy, 'Hygeia: a mid· Victorian dream of a city of health',,!ourIlal
of the Hi .• tory of Medicine XVI 1(962), pp. 217-28.
 366 Graeme Davi{wn
remade in the image of nature. A providence in the skies was supplanted
by the providence of man himself.
III
The idea of the cit as a natural s stem became the dominant aradi m
a Irs eneration of mid e-class ur an investilmtorS.-1llts sim­
orm, It un ergIrt t e t eones 0 t ose aissez-faire economJ:Srsam:t­
.""----'\
f&\ , natural hIstOrians of sodety woo b~c~me tl'i~ -~1rteologtsts of the
7'1 j"
commercial middle class. _~more sophist!..~~d Ma!..thusif,l.IL1.9xm..J.L
en~.thetechnocr.atic profesS!OJ1!!lir;;m o"(~f!!litl;!,ri~ln'§JllHi oth.Elrl~bera.L
reformers. But it nev -unhrersalJic.c.ep~e. and amongthose rpnP.1S
_~ ' w ~co~d the providential ordering of t?g~iety, t _____
-~_I'!_t:'!!e a S,y!!.lE9!9tgivis}.o~_!athElr:lfu:!nJ)IyiiiVersal order. ,Since the late
eighteenth century natuni1 theology had coexisted uneasily with other
'enlightened' philosophies, such as Rousseau's and Condorcet's, which
assigned towns to an artificial order of society opposed to the unspoiled
life of the countryside. Civilization, according to such philosophies, was an
unnatural process which abolished the primitive equality of men.
Commerce and manufactures, upon which urban society was built, des­
troyed the reciprocity between town and country. It followed that
attempts ..t;Q..§]QIYew:ban problems on the assumption Ihiifthe cIty wasa
'fJ natural growth, or civilization a naturc;ll prQ<::ess, were-entIrely miscon­
cei ved and simp1,)!.nbscure£Ltheir.trueotigill.in ll1an::made inequalities.
.. - In his remarkable book The Effects of Civilization on European:slates
(1805) the Tavistock physician Charles Hall made one of the earliest
attacks on the political implications of Paley's doctrines. Hall's concern
was with the effects of 'civilization' on 'the great mass of the people', a
subject which he was well qualified to investigate. The physician, he wrote,
'is admitted into the dwellings of all ranks of people, and into the inner
parts of them; he sees them by their fireside, at their tables. and in their
beds; he sees them at work and at their recreations; he sees them in health,
in sickness, and in the article of death.'6~ Hall's observations of the poor
during the hardships of the Blockade convinced him that their miseries
were not natural occurrences but the result of a grossly unnatural process
of civilization which was destroying agriculture, creating a scarcity of
foodstuffs and increasing social inequalities. Want and dependency such
as he found among his own patients were not, as Paley had argued, an
incentive to industry, but an impediment to virtue and a source of
discontent.'iU
In the 1830s and 40:0. misgivings about the moral effects of town growth
multiplied among both conservatives and radicals. When William Cobbett
described London as a 'wen' - a swelling sore that simultaneously
drained and corrupted the surrounding countryside - he both confirmed
the influence of the organic conception of urban life and strikingly repu­
diated it. The conviction grew among urban radicals too, that the organiza­
tion of the city, if not the process of urbanization itself, was the product of
social interests rather than natural forces. In the midst of the Corn Law
cit. (London. 1805). pp. xi-xii. 2-3_
pp. 22-3.51-2.
The City as a Natural System 367
CriSIS of the early 1840s, the Coventry ribbon-maker and radical
'necessarian' Charles Bray. looked beyond the immediate conflict between
city and country to the grosser inequalities of wealth which it reflected.i2
And, in his Lectures on Social Science perhaps the most incisive attack
upon the natural historians of society the Owenite and educational
reformer James Hole crushingly refuted Whately'S classic argum~Ilt_
~ ... ---- --.-----.,-------------~-
The selection of London as proof that the unconscious working of 'the
natural laws' of wealth are vastly superior to any arrangements of
wisdom and benevolence shows how much the influence of personal
comfort and a preconceived theory, can impair the perception of the
strongest minds. If indeed the population of London is completely and
constantly fed, and if this is effected by the wisest means, - then any
attempt to amend its state would equal the superfluous folly of 'gilding
refined gold'. That the people of London, or the major part of them, do
somehow or other get fed. is true, - but that this is done in the best and
wisest manner would be a pure assumption, were it not a downright
falsehood. The real fact is, that in this large 'wen' - this sponge which
sucks up so much of the wealth of the nation - there are tens of
t . thousands who scarcely know from whence the next day's subsistence
shall come, multiplied thousands who lie upon beds inferior to those
which the farmer gives to his cattle, - and a thousand at least, who,
night after night. have no shelter whatever! So wisely are they supplied
with the means of subsistence. that vast numbers have no recourse save
prostitution and plunder, So 'excellently' do the natural laws adjust the
material relations of man, tha t while the productive labourers
there - the very sinews of society - are perpetually kept at the verge
of starvation, those who produce no wealth - whose occupation is sub­
ordinate. and who in great part might be advantageously dispensed
with in the social machinery, - to say nothing of an immense army of
tricksters and stock-and-share gamblers appropriate the lion's
share, Perhaps not one fourth of its population are usefully employed; it
produces not a tithe of what it consumes, but, like the sands in which
some rivers are absorbed and lost, it sucks up the wealth of the pro­
vinces, rendering a comparatively small service in return. If, as the
learned doctor I Whately I supposes, a band of commissaries had to
provide for the material wants of two millions of people, we question
whether they could make so great a bungle of it as in the present case.
The genuine wants of the deserving are left unsupplied, while the
un·'naturallaw' ministers to the factitious ones of the undeserving. 7:1
Hole was among the first British writers to perceive that the institutional
requirements of maintaining an urban society, in the form of publicly­
provided railways, postal services and municipal baths created the basis --CJ:)
for an attack on the inefficiency and inequity of private consum tion. ~
one dis,euted that it was sensible or 0 egis ate or a single
~lWilY bet~~ntwo towns:OrrograTIt a mgniciWilffiOlli:ipoIve>rsewera~
'ilRural Rides, edited by George Woodcock (Harlllondsworth, 1967), paHim.
7~An Essay Oil the Union of Ar<riculture and Manufactures. (London. 1844). pp_ 53-4.
7JLectures Of! Social Science ami the Orr<am:zation of Labour (London. 1851) pp. 8-9.
 368 Graeme Davison
and water-supply; why, Hole asked, should they not also intervene in the
(j)- marketplace? He aiso recognIzed the monopohstic features of urban land­
lordism and the importance of location in determining urban rents long
before these subjects were treated by the classical economists. 74
~~r_adic!'ll insi:hts of these early Lectures, Hole's
better-known book, The Homes of the Workin~ ~~:~~ ~~:l is
4!§appoip ti ng (luring the Iifj,[rS50s, "Yitb the deClltU;of'Ch;rtiSID..
_he
(j
adooted the liberal-reformism of the Social . e Association
, ~v ~ . .e title of his book sug ests, 's i h the ur an
economy was dIluted In 0 t e lecemeal reform of sin and sanitary
.£ountryside would the problems ofthe greatcities di3>!!~ ..The urban
co IS not surprising. then, to ind Hole's among the' anal
_question, th~!J§, to say, w(f'lillIiiOfJre~fiU:Ur.ansc:e.!:!@.fL..
ourgeois, well meaning philistine and hypocritical philanthropic
writings'76 dismissed by Frederick Engels in his articles on 'The Housing
IV
Question' in 1872. ~ 'The graveyard of philosophy', writes E.P. Thompson, 'is cluttered with
So much has been written about Engell>'s own views of urban
society - not least by recent critics of urban sociology 77 - that only brief
~}~
comment is required here. The philosophical and political milieu in Berlin
from which Engels turned to Manchester in 1842 - specifically the dialec­
tical framework of the Young Hegelians - was a world apart from the
integrationist tradition of British natural theology.'H Yet, as The
Condition of the Working Class in England reveals, Engels became a
diligent stud~nt of British writers, including the Alison brothers. 'l'homas
-SOUthWOod sm1ffi;-;r.P:KaY;-EaWTii'Chadwick-and Robert Vaughan. His
brilliant chapter on 'The Great Towns' may be read in many ways: asa­
traveller's description, as a diatribe against the industrial bourgeOIsie, as
an experiment in the class analysis of urban society. But it is also a devas­
/Cij ~ tating. if larKeJylnlPlicit, attack on the idea of the city as a natural system.
(:lr - --rus favourite metaphors are--ormsorder - Mancnester is 'an unplanned
wilderness' and its people 'struggle helplessly in the whirlpool of modern
industrial life' and of artificiality the towndwellers' restless
is 'abhorrent to nature. '79 Here, it seemed, all those providential laws
beloved of the natural theologians had been suspended for the poorer
inhabitants of the city were neither fed, clothed, housed, washed nor
educated. The city's vital cycles had broken down: rivers and canals were
dammed by weirs and polluted by industrial waste; streets were blocked
with piles of refuse; and the air was trapped in narrow courts and
permeated with factory smoke. 8u Even those delicate mechanisms of
adjustment which liberals relied !!lJ!!i~Jb.clag.b.etw:een rna-terial
74ibid.. pp. 15. 92. 101.
7"The Homes Classes (London. 18661; on Hole·scarL'€ r seeJ.F.C. Harrison.
Social Reform in Hole. 1820-1895. (Leeds. Thoresby Society. 19541.
76Frederick (Moscow. 19751. D. 41.
77For example.
extended discussions of
the [ntroduction 1,0 F. The Condition of the WorkinK CiaBs in
and edited by W.O. Henderson and W.H. Chaloner (Oxford. 19711. pp. xi -xxxv and Steven
Marcus. EllKels. Manchester (171d the WorkinK Cluss (New York. 1974).
7HCompare W.O. Henderson. The Life of Friedrich Enfifels (London. 19761. I. pp. 12-19.
791". Engels. The Condition of the Working Class. pp. 30. 32-3.
~uibid .. pp. 32-6. 60-2.
The City as a Natural System 369
and moral advancement were .J,lo~rless against the dial~lJ£s of class
conflict and segregation. In an otherwise chaOtic environment-:tneonly
'town pfailning device' =: the lines of shops along the main thoroughfares
which screened the nearby slums from the eyes of middle-class passers­
by - operated so as to frustrate, rather than promote, remedial action. HI
For Engels there was no solution to the problems of the cities without chal­
lenging the perverted logic of capitalist society on which 'the antithesis
between town and country' was based. H~ Only when the capitalist order
was overthrown and__ tlliLPQP.!;tJ~tJQl'!.Ai~.E~r~~a .more.. evenly oY!'lL.the.
grand systems which mistook analogies for concepts. 'H:l T~dea of the.Jjty
aSJLrrnt,yrl!l system comprised not one, but several interrel~gies
between the-naturaliiruverse;-fluCwm1an body, the body-politic anatfie
CIty. The ways in which men thought about urban society were inseparable
from their views of natural theology, physiology and political economy,
and conclusions in one region of discourse were often strongly influenced
by principles imported from another.
The precise limits and uses of analogies between nature and human
society, however, remained a contentious issue and among urban inves­
tigators in the 1830s and 40s three clear groupings of men and opinions
stand out: the 'natural historians' of society who belonged principally to
the liberal section of the Church of England or the conservative of
Dissent, and who addressed themselves to 'the higher and more intelligent
classes'; the statisticians and sanitary reformers, whQ§~,stmngestaffini­
ties were with Unitarians and Benthamit~ and who saw themselves as
representaHvils--or-an
u
~~~rgJ.ngEro1esSlonar·class;_ and the Edicill
,
~mists who drew on the cooperative doctrines of Robert Owen or (in
the special case of Engels) on neo-Hegelian philosophy, and who identified
themselves with the poor and the working classes. Of these, the first
remained almost impervious to the brute facts of overty, crime and
dIsease and, in transpos1l1g a ey s paradigm of nature to t e city, were
cOntem:ro make only a few technical adjustments - such as their rudimen­
tary theories of 'relative deprivation' and 'cultural lag'. The second group
of statisticians and sanitarians, who took their theorfltical lead fr
81ibid.. p. 56.
82Engels. Housing Question. p. 92.
83The Poverty of Theory and other essays (London. 1978). p. 296.

 370 Graen~ Davison
drew a sharper distinction between nature and society and contested the
idea of a providential social order. Despite the interesting embryonic ideas
of writers like James Hole, radical urban sociology in Britain was
stillborn - partly, one suspects, because it lacked the philosophical basis
that natural theology provided for liberal writers, or Hegelian dialectics
for European Marxists.
Responses to the urban crisis of the 1830s and 40s foreshadow many of
the issues still exercising students of urban society, and theories born of
that era continue to influence urban debate in our own day. ~4 Recent critics
of urban sociology have drawn attention to the misuse of biological meta­
phors by 'bourgeois' sociologists preoccupied with the 'mechanisms of
adjustment' to capitalist society. The functionalist stream of urban
sociology, they argue, reWed the structures of liberal capitalism as
'natural' and immutable and so masked their 'real' basis in class domina­
tion and exploitation. xc) With hindsight it may appear that the homologies
identified in this paper between natural theology, physiology and urban
sociology were grounded. ultimately, in the principles of bourgeois
political economy. Certainly the uses to which the Q!1@nic metaphor was
p.\:!t were strongly influenced by the class interests of its users. Yer'to-­
reduce all tliese discmjrses f he(jrogi(~.l'1lQ1Qgical, .. soclar=-Loa
"Common'economic base is to ignore the subtle and continuouiinteraction
oetweenLhefii-:-lt was, TYPlcaIIf,lnnll.turaltheologY' iiriapnYSlOlogy,
---faTher tbi,:i political economy or sociology, that the critical transforma­
tions of the organic metaphor occurred. If religion, as Harold Perkin has
argued, was 'the midwife of class ',H5 then natural theology was arguably
the midwife of urban sociolo y, for withol!.tjJs--.pLI?_I?_el1l:!'lj!l.Jhe,birt!~it­
.~sslng~JJie or er iness of nature, !..rls!. sofil;)ty,j!_.~1l:L~oubted_
,,~
~wn:effi!lr a sy..stemat,kand holistiC- study of urban society would then have
; 'been attempted at all." .--'------.--.. - -.- --, ".- ., --"
\/ -~-----~---- ..
(ij)
H4Compare Hugh Stretton. Urban Planning in Rich and Poor Countries (London. 1978f.
chs. 1-7 for a succinct outline of current planning ideologies.
Hf'Manuel Castells. 'Theory and Ideology in Urban Sociology' in C,G, Pickvance. ed .•
Urban S(}ciology: Critical Essays (London, 1976), pp. 60-84; idem.. The Urban Question A
Marxist Approach (London. 1977). pp. 118-22; H. and J. Schwendinger. The Sociologists of
the Chair A -Radical Analysis of the Formative Years of North American Sociology
(18S3-1922). New York, 1974). pp. 383-409.
18 Concepts in Contexts
Pursuing the Urban of 'Urban' Sociologyl
RE. P
ahl
The notion tha t there is an established theory of the city based on a distinc­
tive social fact which has independent explanatory power dies hard.
'Urban life' seems to be self-evidently distinct. Myths about the country
and the city can be traced back as far as there is recorded writing. 2 Count­
less books describe town life and the social, psychological, geographical
and economic consequences of urban living. Sociologists would seem to be
more than ordinarily perverse when they deny the existence of the city as a
sociological entity. Most academics have had personal experience of
emerging blinking in the middle of a city on returning, often by air, from
some remote rural retreat. The effect on the emotions is overwhelm­
ing the noise. the larger number of people. the varied and disparate
/\
range of activities, all encourage the notion that there are universal charac­
teristics of cities irrespective of time or place. Greeks, Romans, Venetians,
Parisians and Levittowners may, in some fundamental way, seem to be
united by being urban dwellers.
Yet even the most avid enthusiasts for the town as a distinctive social
form exhibit some unease when generalizations are made which purport to
encompass Babylon and Birmingham. Ancient cities are a distinctive
type; medieval cities are a distinctive type; modern cities are a distinctive
type. Such agreement can be maintained, even though the role of the town
in effecting its transformation from one type to another may remain
bitterly in dispute. But one should not overburden typologies: the types
which scholars devise for their purposes are not fixed and immutable.
They are simply devised in order to explain or to illuminate some question
'I am indebted to my colleague Chris Pickvance for a characteristically penetrating
comment on an earlier draft of this chapter. He, of course. bears no responsibility for the use
I have made of his helpfuladvice. [ also found the discussion at Leicester very instructive: it
was nice to be told by historians that I had written an historical paper.
2Raymond Williams. The Country and the City (London. 1973).