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(8.) "A public mortuary, to which bodies awaiting interment may be removed, Mortuary.
"has been provided in this parish in a very convenient and suitable situation.
"It was built in 1875, and rebuilt in 1887."
It will be in the recollection of the Vestry that your late Medical Officer of Health
held, that the great object of sanitary administration should be to educate and lead the
people to a knowledge of the value of Sanitation, and that one good lesson was capable
of producing much better results than many harsh and coercive proceedings. Working
in that spirit, police court proceedings are rarely needed, much waste of time is thus
avoided and bitterness of feeling also; and it was given in evidence to the Commissioners
—as to the many hundreds of houses visited by them, the improvements in which they
commend in their report—that it was not necessary to take out a summons in any one
of those cases; nevertheless, it will be seen that the third recommendation of the Commissioner's
Report is: "The more complete exercise of the powers of the Nuisance
Removal and other Sanitary Acts by necessary magisterial proceedings."
The late
Medical Officer
of Health on
Sanitary Administration.
No comment is offered on that recommendation, nor on the other facts adduced
(which would require the weight and authority of your Medical Officer of Health to
enforce), further than the observation, that with a remarkably declining death rate,
and with a diminution of deaths from typhoid in four years from 1 in 93 to 1 in 144,
while London, as a whole, remained almost stationary, and with the testimony of
the Commissioners to the value of the work which has been done, it may very well be
questioned (to say the least), if there is any district in London that could have
come out of such an enquiry with greater credit than the Parish of Shoreditch.
The following notes of the opening address of Mr. E. Lewis Thomas, M.A.,
Vestry's Counsel, will, no doubt, be found of historical value and interest.
COUNSEL'S SPEECH.
Mr. Thomas said: "For many years a steady, energetic, and persistent
work of Sanitary Improvement has been carried on in Shoreditch, in the
provision of new sewers, the opening up of new streets and the widening
and improvement of other streets, and the removal of large numbers of old,
ruinous, and badly constructed houses. In the introduction of the constant water
supply (so far back as 1877, the parish being the first in the Metropolis to
secure that advantage to its inhabitants), and in the thorough rectification of
the drains, the paving and drainage of the yards and forecourts. The improvement
and remodelling of the water-closets, the construction of improved dust
bins, and the general repairing of roofs, walls, ceilings, &c., of the dwellings
in the parish. These works may be dealt with in the order in which they have
been referred to.
K