Edwin Chadwick

Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB (24 January 1800 – 6 July 1890) was an English social reformer who is noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and to improve sanitation and public health.

Edwin Chadwick was born in 1800 at Longsight, Manchester, to James Chadwick. His mother died when he was still a young child, yet to be named. His father, James Chadwick, tutored the scientist John Dalton in music and botany and was considered an advanced liberal politician, thus exposing young Edwin to political and social ideas. His grandfather, Andrew Chadwick, had been a close friend of the theologian John Wesley.

He began his education at a small school in Lancashire and moved to a boarding school in , where he studied until he was 10. When his family moved to London in 1810, Chadwick continued his education with the help of private tutors, his father and a great deal of self-teaching.

His father remarried in the early 1820s and Edwin's younger half-brother was baseball icon Henry Chadwick, born in 1824. James, his new wife, Henry and younger sister Rosa migrated to the United States in 1837. Henry mirrored his brother's interest in health by advocating for baseball to become the national pastime for the US.

At 18, he decided to pursue a career in law and undertook an apprenticeship at an attorney's office. In 1823, he enrolled in law school at The Temple in London. On 26 November 1830 he was called to the bar, becoming a barrister, also known as a court lawyer.

Called to the bar without independent means, he sought to support himself by literary work such as his work on Applied Science and its Place in Democracy, and his essays in the Westminster Review, mainly on different methods of applying scientific knowledge to the practice of government. He became friends with two of the leading philosophers of the day, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Bentham engaged him as a literary assistant and left him a large legacy. He also became acquaintances with Thomas Southwood Smith, Neil Arnott, and James Kay-Shuttleworth, all doctors.

...
Wikipedia