Men and women spitting in the streets, spreading disease and being just overall gross. That was London in 1902 when the public health department decided that enough was enough and that it was time to make spitting in public taboo.
Anti-Spitting War in London
The public health department of the city of London is embarking upon a crusade in which it will have the sympathy of every decent man and woman, and equally, it is to be hoped the active support of public bodies and large employers of labor. The department has issued a circular asking for cooperation “in preventing so far as possible the growing habit of spitting in the streets and other places of public resort.”
The objectionable nature of this practice on grounds of ordinary cleanliness need not be emphasized. It becomes painfully obvious to all who travel by public conveyances, and who someday or other have the misfortune to be windward of the careless expectorator of the omnibus top.
Nor need we lay stress upon the serious import as a means of spreading tuberculous infection that indiscriminate expectoration bears in public places. Out readers are well aware that, whatever may be the result of the commission inquiring into the power of infected food to spread tubercle among us, there is no doubt in the mind of any authority upon the subject that the most formidable vehicle of infection of all is the sputum of tuberculous persons.
The whole question is really one of educating the public. It is not essential to anybody’s comfort or safety that he should expectorate freely into the air or on the ground about him. When all his fellowmen and women realize this they will taboo the indiscriminate expectorate. At present his performance is regarded largely as a matter of course. The working man or woman by his side knows nothing of the possible danger and is not yet “nice” enough to deplore the nastiness of the casual expectoration of a neighbor.
Our medical readers can more than any other class of men assist public bodies in the education of the public mind in this matter.
Already both in Glasgow and Liverpool the corporations have inserted a clause in their by-laws making spitting on the municipal tramway cars a finable offense. The metropolis in many similar matters is wont only to follow instead of to lead the steps taken by other cities. It is to be hoped that it will not be long before the example of Liverpool and Glasgow in this matter is widely followed in the public conveyances of London.
Source: The Hawaiian star (Honolulu [Oahu]), September 3, 1902.
