Chadwick devoted his life to social reform. He was secretary to the Poor Law Commission when he made the above report to Parliament. In it he included a careful analysis of causes of death in 1838 and 1839 and gave a vivid picture of insanitary conditions in England and Wales. The complete report was issued in 3 vols. in 1842 (though the 2nd and 3rd volumes are infrequently found) plus a supplementary summary volume published in 1843. As a result of this and an earlier (1833) report, the foundations of later systems of government inspection were laid, a Public Health Act was passed (1848) and a General Board of Health was established. Chadwick included various lithographed maps illustrating public health issues such as deaths, contagious or epidemic diseases,  housing conditions, etc. See also No.1625.

The publication of Chadwick's 1842 Report inspired the creation in 1843 of the Royal Commission for Inquiry into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts, in which Chadwick once again played a leading role, drafting the major part of the Commission's first report and supplying the administrative and operational proposals for the second. The Commission's two reports revealed the unhealthy sanitary and social conditions prevailing among the towns and proposed a number of recommendations to be embodied in new legislation, the most important being a proposal to grant the national government power to supervise the execution of all general measures for regulating the sanitary condition of larger urban communities.

Chadwick may be said to have initiated the public health era. Largely through his efforts the Public Health Act 1848 came into existence in England. He was the greatest sanitarian of the 19th century; among other things he was responsible for the introduction of glazed earthenware pipes for drains. See also R. A. Lewis’s Edwin Chadwick and the public health movement, 1832-54, London, 1952.  Digital facsimile of the 1887 work from the Internet Archive at this link.