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The Infants Home. 87. I am pleased to be able to give a more favourable
account of this Institution this year than it has hitherto justified; the
mortality among the children having been decidedly less. There were 52
children received into the House during the year, of whom 5 died, four of
them from, as stated, "consumption." 102 children have been farmed out,
and among these, only 6 deaths are reported. It will be remembered that
last year, out of 97 children there had been 22 deaths. The improvement,
therefore, is very marked, and I hope it will continue. Three of the children
came from St Giles Workhouse. I am informed by Mrs. Main, that the
receipts last year were £514, of which sum the mothers paid £382 13s. 10d.
The Sanitary Work of the Year. 88. Every year makes the duty of
our Inspectors more trying; partly because with more experience of its
necessity, the inspection becomes more searching; partly because Parliament,
in each succeeding session, passes laws imposing fresh duties; and partly,
because the Privy Council presses, with more earnestness, year after year,
the obligation of carrying out the sanitary measures which have been
enacted in various statutes.
Method of Inspection. 89. Since the epidemic of relapsing fever, a
more systematic method of detecting zymotic diseases has been in operation
than heretofore. The Inspectors have been instructed to call every morning
upon Mr. Bennett, the Parochial Medical Officer, upon Dr. Grimes, the
Resident Physician of Bloomsbury Dispensary, and upon certain private
practitioners to obtain information of every case of zymotic disease that has
some under their notice during the past twenty-four hours, and to report to me
the result. The cases having been ascertained, the Inspectors visit the
houses, and give notice for such improvements to be made and such disinfection
to be done, as circumstances may require. Short of actual house-tohouse
visitation, this is an complete a system as can be worked with our present
staff; and I am glad to be able to add, that owing to the good will and
ready assistance of the medical gentlemen applied to, the Inspectors have
carried it out very satisfactorily. By this method, we are able to detect an
epidemic disease in its beginning, when we have the best chance of checking
it, and we get a daily register of its progress,—a register so full as to be
closely approximative to the actual number of attacks, as our further
inquiries of private practitioners, by circular, during the recent epidemic
of small pox, has proved; for these inquiries did not bring to my knowledge
more than six cases in four months that we bad not already registered.
Every system, however well organised, is apt to get out of gear when there
is little work to be done; this would happen to our method of sanitary
inspection; but it is easy to give it a fresh impulse with the expected advent
of epidemic disease. (See Table XIII. on following page.)
I feel it incumbent on me to express my warmest acknowledgments of
the cordial manner in which assistance has been rendered to your Board by
the private practitioners of the District.
Disinfecting Chamber. 90. Your Board, desirous of carrying out all
such regulations as the sanitary necessities of the district seemed to require,
has this year sanctioned the erection of a hot-air disinfecting chamber, as
designed by Messrs. Fraser & Sons, Engineers, of Bow Common. This
chamber is so constructed, that all the effluvia given off by the bedding in
the process of heating, are carried by means of a flue through the furnace
and destroyed, thus effectually preventing any contamination of the air. By
using coke or smokeless coal also, no nuisance can arise from the chimney.
In order to obviate, as much as possible, any chance of diffusing poison
during the removal of infected goods from a house to the chamber, a closed
truck has been provided, which, together with the bedding it contains, is
put into the oven, and disinfected each time it is used. In some instances
when it is found to be difficult to permeate thick flock bedding with hot-air,