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12
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
have also been reported and attended to, & that 13,310 houses have been benefited
by the various operations thus carried out, as shown in the table attached.
The number and character of the nuisances dealt with during the last
official year will appear as usual in your forthcoming annual report.
To this catalogue may be added the fact that many thousand feet of
open ditches have been annihilated or abandoned, and covered sewers substituted
in their stead, that upwards of one hundred thousand feet, or nearly 20
miles of sewerage works have been constructed within the district, fully one
half of which has been constructed by your Board, and that a very considerable
number of private sewers have also been constructed in connection with
building enterprises. I append a table shewing the principal works
referred to.
It may not be unworthy of remark that our whole local system of
drainage devisnd by your Surveyor Mr. Bean, and approved by yourselves,
has so thoroughly harmonized with the Bazelgettian scheme, that now for
fourteen years, no hitch arising from our local necessities has marred in any
way the general benefit derived therefrom—indeed it may be said that truly
in a sanitary point of view the modifications suggested by our local wants, so
thoroughly investigated and reported on by your surveyor, have materially
tended to satisfy the future as well as the present requirements of the Western
Metropolitan area.
Amongst the chief results of your supervision also may be mentioned
your successful opposition to the deodorizing scheme at Sand's End, Fulham,
which, if it had been carried out. would have stamped an irreparable injury
on Fulham, and, I believe, would have rendered nugatory the effort to purify
this upper portion of the Thames.
There are many living amongst us now who scarce could realize the
fact that through the length and breadth of both these parishes large open
ditches once threaded their circuitous way, carrying their foul contents
sluggishly towards our noble river, and yielding poisonous vapours to the inhabitants
in their route. All this within a score of years has changed, and
though defects undoubtedly may exist in our present Metropolitan regime,
still one broad reality such as this will mark the efforts of our time with the
coronet of success, and leave an impress on the history of our district which
the experience of many generations will not efface. A few short months and
we shall see the entire and absolute diversion of the low-level sewage from the
Thames, and almost coincident with it, the abstraction of the filth of many
local towns. London may then with more complacency depend upon the
venerable river for its supply of water for domestic purposes, and not till then,
sit comfortably on the pinnacle of security. The time may yet arrive again
when the Hammersmith and Chiswick Fishermen may return to their pristine
occupation of catching fish at Putney, indeed the craft has already resumed its
avocation in Hammersmith reach.
The sickness and Mortality returns in the Fulham District in 1868
have not been characterised by any great excess. London as well as the
country, have been visited more or less by scarlatina epidemic, but I am
happy to be able to report that, the Fulham district has not participated to any