Parliament, Physicians, and Nuisances: The Demedicalization of Nuisance Law, 1831-1855

In Britain in 1830, nuisances legally comprised a heterogeneous collection of irritants, united by their ability to cause hurt, inconvenience, or damage. The only legal remedies for nuisances that applied to the entire country were provided through the common law. Though respected, common-law procedure was time consuming, costly, uncertain, and intended to protect the enjoyment of property, not of health. Dangers to health could be removed if they were a nuisance, yet health hazards were not conceptualized separately from nuisances in general, nor were they dealt with differently in practice. This paper demonstrates that during the 1831–32 cholera epidemic, and again in 1846, the executive and the legislature created a strictly medicalized health hazard as part of the transformation in nuisance law and practice. The paper argues, however, that the creation of a medicalized health hazard was a defensive reaction on the part of central authorities. Indeed, after 1846 Parliament retreated from a strictly medicalized health hazard in the face of local resistance and skepticism, and by 1855 physicians played only a marginal and supporting role in nuisance practice. The development of nuisance law thus illustrates the local inspiration for sanitary reform and the often highly contested nature of central interventions.