Chadwick Trust

The Chadwick Trust was set up in 1895 under the provisions of the will of Sir Edwin Chadwick (d 1890), who bequeathed money to promote research into public health engineering. Sir Edwin Chadwick, born in 1800, was a pioneering sanitary reformer; secretary to Jeremy Bentham; appointed Assistant Commissioner to the Poor Law Enquiry, 1832; appointed Royal Commissioner to the Poor Law Enquiry, and to enquire into the employment of children in factories, 1833; Secretary of the Poor Law Commission, 1834-1847; Royal Commissioner to enquire into a rural constabulary, 1836; published his report on the sanitary condition of the labouring population, 1842; appointed Royal Commissioner on London sanitation, 1847; Metropolitan Commissioner of Sewers, 1847-1849; Commissioner of the General Board of Health, 1848-1854. At his death he also bequeathed money to University College London to create the Chadwick Professorship of Municipal Engineering, first occupied by his son Sir Osbert Chadwick from 1898. The Chadwick Trust gives prizes and medals to students researching into both the medical and engineering aspects of sanitary science. It also funds lectures on related subjects. The Trust was set up under a Board of Trustees and was later associated with the Royal Society of Health, on whose premises its office was situated. In 1980 negotiations began with University College London to house the Trust in the Civil Engineering Department, and the Trust was subsequently administered by a committee of University College London.