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23
A full and detailed report of the outbreak at New Southgate
was laid before you in December, of which the following is
an abbreviated form:—
OUTBREAK OF TYPHOID FEVER IN NEW SOUTHGATE
IN SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, AND NOVEMBER,
1906.
Locality.—New Southgate, in the lower part of which
the outbreak occurred, has a population of about 5,000. It
was formerly a good middle-class residential suburb, but has
been steadily deteriorating in the quality of the class of its
inhabitants for the last 10 years or more. At the present
time the larger part of the population consists of the lower
middle and poorer working-classes, chiefly the latter. Many
of the larger houses are now let in tenements, and occupied
by two or more families.
The lower part of New Southgate consists of somewhat
mean streets of small houses, some of them accommodating
more than one family. These streets of small houses are
fairly well built for this class of house, and are in good
condition structurally. They are all supplied with water
from the Metropolitan Water Company, and are all well
drained and well fitted with sanitary arrangements, but they
are occupied by a class of persons who, with some exceptions,
are dirty in their ways of living, and the houses are consequently
for the most part dirty and badly kept.
There is a watercourse, Bounds Green Brook, which runs
through the valley, immediately to the south and south-east of
New Southgate. This brook is polluted by sewage effluent
from sewage farms before it enters into the Southgate district.
The state of the brook has improved somewhat the last few
years, since the Middlesex County Council has caused it to
be cleaned out periodically, but it is always more or less
under suspicion as a possible cause of ill-health, and is a
source of nuisance at times by reason of the smells arising
from it. The brook and the banks on either side of it are a
•common playground for the children of the neighbourhood,
who play about it, and sometimes paddle and bathe in it.
Just on the Wood Green side of the boundary line
between Wood Green and Southgate districts, there is a large
dust-shoot belonging to Wood Green, situated to the northwest
of the Great Northern Railway line, between it, Bounds
Green brook and the Southgate Gas Company Works, not
more than 100 yards from the nearest houses of the infected
area. The use of this dust-shoot was discontinued by Wood