Promoting Clean Water in Nineteenth-Century Public Policy: Professors, Preachers, and Polliwogs in Kingston, Ontario

Abstract

A case study of Kingston, Ontario, reveals that growing confidence in the response of science and statistics to the threat of epidemic disease supported the development and expansion of municipal water and sewer services in the late nineteenth century. Informed by science and statistics, professional city managers and sanitary experts sought solutions combining fiduciary responsibility with public service. Preliminary evidence also suggests that, in some cases, Protestant-inspired rhetoric contributed to this support for new sanitary measures.