How healthy were the suburbs?

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 31, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 767-798

  Harris, Richard ^a   Mercier, Michael E ^a  

^a MCMASTER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Canada; Cities; Mortality; Population health; Sanitation; Septic tanks; Suburbs

Indexed keywords

HEALTH STATUS; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; MORTALITY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SANITATION; SUBURBAN AREA; TWENTIETH CENTURY; URBAN HISTORY;

EID: 24744464970     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144205276249     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow (London, 1902). Howard's book was originally published in 1898 under the title Tomorrow. A Peaceful Path to Social Reform.
2. "The King and Housing. Visit to the Hampstead Garden Suburb." The Times March 20, 1911, 8. The actual rates were 80/1000 for Bournville, compared with 131/1000 for the City of Birmingham as a whole. The Bournville Village Estate was established in 1895 and substantial construction had occurred by 1900. Plans for Hampstead Garden Suburb were prepared in 1905 but the organization that developed the area was founded only in 1907.
3. Adna Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century. A Study in Statistics (New York, 1899), 388.
4. Harlan Douglass, The Suburban Trend (New York, 1925), 310.
5. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier. The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 57;
6. Cf. Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness (New York, 1972), 203.
7. Douglass, Suburban Trend, 327.
8. Martin Melosi, Effluent America. Cities, Industry, Energy and the Environment (Pittsburgh, 2001), 37-38.
9. Michael R. Haines, "The White Population of the United States," in Michael R. Haines and Richard M. Steckel, eds., A Population History of North America (New York, 2000), 305-370.
10. See also Samuel M. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years. Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth Century America (Princeton, N.J., 1991).
11. John H. Rauch, A Report to the Board of Health of the City of Chicago on the Necessity of an Extension of the Sewerage of the City (Chicago, 1873), 7.
12. I b i d.
13. See also the discussion in Edith Abbott, The Tenements of Chicago, 1908-1935 (Chicago, 1936), 45.
14. For a discussion of the importance of cultural factors on infant mortality in Canada, see Patricia Thornton and Sherry Olson, "A Deadly Discrimination Among Montreal Infants, 1860-1900," Continuity and Change 16 (2001): 95-135.
15. For the United States see Preston and Haines, Fatal Years.
16. Robert Morse Woodbury, Causal Factors in Infant Mortality. A Statistical Study Based on Investigations in Eight Cities U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Publication No. 142 (Washington, D.C., 1925), 129;
17. Rollo H. Britten and Isidore Altman, "Illness and Accidents Among Persons Living Under Different Housing Conditions," Public Health Reports 56 (1941): 609-640.
18. For an earlier British analysis, based on weaker evidence, see John F.J. Sykes, Public Health and Housing. The Influence of the Dwelling Upon Health in Relation to the Changing Style of Habitation (London, 1901).
19. For an early, influential study of the relationship between housing costs, health, and nutrition see C.G.M. M'Gonigle, "Poverty, Nutrition and the Public Health. An Investigation into Some of the Results of Moving a Slum Population to Modern Dwellings," Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 26: 677-687.
20. For the argument that better nutrition was critical in reducing mortality, see Thomas McKeown, The Role of Medicine. Dream, Mirage or Nemesis? (Princeton, N.J., 1979).
21. For surveys see Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City. Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, 2000);
22. Joel A. Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink. Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, 1996);
23. Joel A. Tarr and Gabriel Dupuy, eds., The Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia, 1988).
24. Richard Harris and Robert Lewis, "The Geography of North American Cities and Suburbs, 1900-1950," Journal of Urban History 27 (2001): 262-292.
25. For leading examples see, respectively, Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias. The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York, 1987);
26. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier.
27. Douglass, Suburban Trend, 96, 146, 151.
28. On New York City, for example, see Gordon Atkins, Health, Housing and Poverty in New York City, 1865-1898. (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1947),296;
29. David Rosner, "Introduction" to David Rosner, ed., Hives of Sickness. Public Health and Epidemics in New York City.(New Brunswick, 1995), 7,8;
30. Cf. Warner, Urban Wilderness, 198-229. A recent study of Pittsburgh, for example, contrasts high mortality rates within the city with healthy middle-class suburbs but neglects industrial suburbs and satellites such as Homestead.
31. See S.J. Kleinberg, In the Shadow of the Mills. Working-Class Families in Pittsburgh, 1870-1907. (Pittsburgh, 1989),94, 98-99;
32. Cf. Margaret Byington, Homestead. The Households of a Mill Town. (New York, 1910).
33. See, for example, the earlier work of one of the present authors. Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs. Toronto's American Tragedy 1900-1950 (Baltimore, 1996).
34. Sheila Lloyd, "The Ottawa Typhoid Epidemics of 1911 and 1912. A Case Study of Disease as a Catalyst for Urban Reform," Urban History Review 8 (1979): 108.
35. Mortality data were not available for the remaining places.
36. Unweighted, that is, by the size of the municipality.
37. U.S. Public Health Service, Municipal Health Department Practice for the Year 1923. Public Health Bulletin No. 164. (Washington, D.C., 1926), 249. It is not possible to be more precise since this study reported only grouped data.
38. Grace M. Kneedler, "Economic Classification of Cities," in The Municipal Year Book, 1945 (Chicago, 1945), Table IV. Kneedler was using a procedure, developed by Chauncy Harris, that depended upon estimating, for each place, the ratio of employment to resident labor force.
39. This is not true for the subsample of residential suburbs, but this may be a consequence of the very small sample size.
40. The variation among residential suburbs would have been greater if, following Kneedler, we had counted East St. Louis (IMR = 108) within this category. On the criteria that she employed, this municipality was on the borderline of being "balanced," which is where we placed it.
41. For a summary of the research design and methods, see Mary Dempsey, Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Brockton, Mass. Based on Births in One Year, U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau Infant Mortality Series No.8. (Washington, D.C., 1919), 59-62;
42. Woodbury, Causal Factors, 12-15.
43. Anna Rochester, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Baltimore, Md., Based on Births in One Year," U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau Publication No. 119 (Washington, D.C., 1923), 106-110.
44. New York City Department of Health Annual Report for 1913 (New York, 1914), 58. Parts of this and other health reports are available at The Living City Web site, http://156.145.78.54/htm/home.htm.
45. Werner Troesken, "The Limits of Jim Crow. Race and the Provision of Water and Sewerage Services in American Cities, 1880-1925," Journal of Economic History 62 (2002): 734-772.
46. Racial disparities were significantly reduced when water provision was made public. See Werner Troesken, "Typhoid Rates and the Public Acquisition of Private Waterworks, 1880-1925," Journal of Economic History 59 (1999): 927-948,
47. and "Race, Disease, and the Provision of Water in American Cities, 1889-1921," Journal of Economic History 61 (2001): 750-776.
48. Theresa Haley, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Akron, Ohio, Based on Births in One Year," U.S. Department of Labor Infant Mortality Series No. 11. (Washington, D.C., 1920), 16;
49. Elizabeth Hughes, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Gary, Ind., Based on Births in One Year," U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau Publication No. 112 (Washington, D.C., 1923), 69;
50. Estelle Hunter, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Waterbury, Conn., Based on Births in One Year," U.S. Department of Labor Infant Mortality Series No. 7. (Washington, D.C., 1918), 24;
51. Nila Allen, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Saginaw, Michigan, Based on Births in One Year," U.S. Department of Labor Infant Mortality Series No. 9. (Washington, D.C., 1919), 44;
52. Emma Duke, "Infant Mortality. Results of a Field Study in Johnstown, Pa., Based on Births in One Calendar Year," U.S. Department of Labor Infant Mortality Series No. 3. (Washington, D.C., 1915), 15.
53. Michael E. Mercier and Christopher Boone, "Infant Mortality in Ottawa, Canada, 1901. Assessing Cultural, Economic and Environmental Factors," Journal of Historical Geography 28 (2002): 486-507.
54. John Duffy, The Sanitarians. A History of American Public Health (Urbana and Chicago, 1990).
55. Exceptionally, the initiative was local. Montclair's Board of Health undertook its own survey using the Bureau's research design and interview schedule.
56. U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Mortality. Montclair New Jersey. A Study of Infant Mortality in a Suburban Community (Washington, D.C., 1915), 13.
57. Ibid., 23.
58. Ibid., 28.
59. Mary V. Dempsey, Infant Mortality ... Brockton, Mass., 49, 51.
60. Palmer, A Health Survey, 366-68, 398-400.
61. Lara Marks, Metropolitan Maternity. Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth-Century London (Amsterdam, 1996), 88-125.
62. Ibid., 178.
63. New York City Department of Health, Annual Report, 58.
64. David Rosner and Kenneth T. Jackson, personal communications, August 5, 2003.
65. Ford, Slums and Housing, 369.
66. Judith W. Leavitt, The Healthiest City. Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Princeton, N.J., 1982), 35-36.
67. Hughes, "Infant Mortality ... Gary, Ind.," 69.
68. Allen, "Infant Mortality ... Saginaw, Mich.," 48.
69. Duke, "Infant Mortality ... Johnstown, Pa.," 17-19.
70. Todd Gardner, "The Slow Wave. The Changing Residential Status of Cities and Suburbs in the United States, 1850-1940," Journal of Urban History 27 (2001): 293-312;
71. Leo Schnore, "The Socio-Economic Status of Cities and Suburbs," American Sociological Review 28 (1963): 76-85.
72. Ella Oppenheimer, "Infant Mortality in Memphis," U.S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau Publication No. 233. (Washington, D.C., 1937).
73. Ibid., 92. The racial classification is, of course, that employed by the local health authority.
74. Ibid., 39.
75. Roger Biles, Memphis in the Great Depression (Knoxville, Tennessee, 1986), 90.
76. L.M. Graves and Alfred H. Fletcher, "Housing Problem in a Southern City," American Journal of Public Health 25 (1935): 24.
77. L.M. Graves and Alfred H. Fletcher, "Developing a Housing Program in a Southern City," American Journal of Public Health 27 (1937): 645.
78. Biles, Memphis in the Great Depression, 90.
79. Harris and Lewis, "The Geography of North American Cities and Suburbs," 273.
80. Melosi, Sanitary City, 152. Tarr reports that in 1909 the proportion of the urban population that was served by sewers ranged from a high of eighty-five percent in cities with populations in excess of 300,000 to a low of sixty-seven percent in places with a population of 30,000-50,000.
81. Joel Tarr, Ultimate Sink, 188.
82. Michael Doucet and John Weaver, Housing the North American City (Montreal and Kingston, 1981), 108.
83. A.G. Dalzell, Housing in Canada. II. The Housing of the Working Classes (Toronto, 1928), 18;
84. A.G. Dalzell, Housing in Canada. I. Housing in Relation to Land Development (Toronto, 1927), 30.
85. "Clean Up the Suburbs," Washington Post May 17, 1927.
86. U.S. Office of Housing Expediter. Land and Public Utilities Advisory Service, "Report on Land and Public Services Activities under the Veterans' Emergency Housing Program, 1946-1947," Washington, D.C., July 1947, p.47. Typescript. [U.S. National Archives, RG 252, OHE, LPUAS, Box 4].
87. I b i d.
88. Duffy, Sanitarians, 205.
89. Troesken, "The Limits of Jim Crow."
90. Byington, Homestead, 23-24.
91. Joel Tarr and Terry Yosie, "Critical Decisions in Pittsburgh Water and Wastewater Treatment," in Joel A. Tarr, ed., Devastation and Renewal. An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region (Pittsburgh, forthcoming.)
92. Douglass, Suburban Trend, 199.
93. "Topics of the Times," New York Times, October 6, 1904.
94. I b i d.
95. Clarence Dean, "Suburbs Expand Health Outlays to Meet Needs of Rapid Growth," New York Times, February 10, 1958.
96. Wilson G. Smillie, Public Health Administration in the United States, 3rd ed., (New York, 1947), 427.
97. Ibid., 428.
98. Committee on Fringe Area Sanitation Problems of the American Public Health Association, "Fringe Area Sanitation," in Public Health Reports 76 (1961): 314.
99. Dean, "Suburbs Expand ... ", 18.
100. Otto Engelke, J. Robert Cameron, and Joseph F. O'Brien, "A Description of Health Problems in the Area of the Willow Run Plant of Ford Motor Company, Washtenaw County, Michigan, as of February 27, 1943," Typescript, 1943, 15, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 215, Box 12.
101. Ibid., 21.
102. Lowell J. Carr and James E. Stermer, Willow Run. A Study of Industrialization and Cultural Inadequacy (New York, 1952), 85-86.
103. Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside. Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, 2001), 88.
104. Melosi, Sanitary City, 322.
105. Mabel I. Morris, "Insanitary Dangers," letter to the editor, Washington Post, March 25, 1943.
106. "Rockville Mayor Fears Epidemics," Washington Post, July 29, 1948.
107. U.S. Office of Housing Expediter, "Report on Land and Public Services ...," 46.
108. Smillie, Public Health Administration, 407.
109. Rome, The Bulldozer, 96.
110. Marion R. Scalf, William J. Dunlap, and James F. Kreissl, Environmental Effects of Septic Tank Systems (Ada, Oklahoma, 1977), 8.
111. Quoted in Rome, Bulldozer, 96.
112. Committee on Fringe Area Sanitation Problems, "Fringe Area Sanitation," 309.
113. Leonard M. Board and Herbert J. Dunsmore, "Environmental Health Problems Related to Urban Decentralization," American Journal of Public Health 43 (1948): 986-996. We are not familiar with any other survey of similar scope.
114. A.C. Findlay, "The Housing Situation in Flint, Michigan," Flint Institute of Research and Planning, Flint, Michigan, February 1938, 4 [Cyclostyled].
115. Board and Dunsmore, "Environmental Health Problems ...", 990-91. "Garage houses" were garages that had been legalized for "temporary" use as dwellings under a 1925 amendment to Michigan's housing law.
116. Walter Firey, "Social Aspects to Land Use Planning in the Country-City Fringe. The Case of Flint, Michigan," in Special Bulletin 339, Agricultural Experiment Station, Michigan State College, East Lansing, Michigan, 1946, 24-25.
117. I. Harding Hughes, Local Government in the Fringe Area of Flint, Michigan, Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1947, 37, 48.
118. Board and Dunsmore, "Environmental Health Problems ...," 993.
119. Tom Dinell, The Influences of Federal, State and Local Legislation on Residential Building in the Flint Metropolitan Area. Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1952, 74.
120. On general FHA strategy, see Philip Cornick, "FHA and Urban Decentralization," in Insured Mortgage Portfolio 5 (1941 Fourth Quarter): 23-25, 45-47.
121. Emerson J. Elliott, Charles Hetrick, and Stanley Johnson, The Urban Fringe Problem in the Flint Metropolitan Area. A Study of Services and Attitudes, Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1957, 21.
122. Charles V. Willie, "A Research Note on the Changing Association Between Infant Mortality and Socio-Economic Status," in Social Forces 37 (1959): 222-225.
123. George Emery, Facts of Life. The Social Construction of Vital Statistics, Ontario, 1869-1952. (Montreal, 1993), 72-96. A further complication is that, especially from the 1910s, a growing number of births took place in hospitals, which introduces a significant bias into locational information.
124. Richard M. Steckel, "The African-American Population of the United States, 1790-1920," in Haines and Steckel, A Population History, 441.
125. Hughes, "Infant Mortality ... Gary, Ind.," 2
126. Ibid., 88, 63.
127. Allen, "Infant Mortality ... Saginaw, Michigan ...," 11.
128. Ibid., 70.
129. Philippa Mein Smith and Lionel Frost, "Suburbia and Infant Death in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Adelaide," in Urban History 21 (1994): 251-72.
130. Philippa Mein Smith, personal communication, August 5, 2003.
131. Smith and Frost, "Suburbia and Infant Death," 269.
132. Michael Mercier, "The Social Geography of Childhood Mortality in Toronto, Ontario, 1901: Patterns and Determinants," (Ph.D. dissertation, McMaster University, 2004), 53.