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18
Medical Officer's Report.
Many of the rain-water pipes and gutters are defective, and in some
altogether absent.
In some the rain-water pipes are not disconnected from the drains.
In many of the tenements the rooms are dangerously overcrowded, and so
badly ventilated that on entering one is almost stifled by the foul and poisonous
and polluted air.
Many of the rooms and passages are in a foul, dirty, and filthy condition,
and some have not been cleansed for years.
The ground floor of Union Terrace is a large cowshed, and at No. 70,
Leather Lane there is an underground bakehouse.
On account of our inspection and action with regard to Dove Court, I am
glad to learn that these houses are soon to be demolished.
A small area, south of Crown Court and to the north of Union Terrace, is
already cleared.
Many of these grave sanitary, structural, and architectural defects can only
be remedied by rearrangement and reconstruction.
The only way of effecting a satisfactory and permanent improvement is to
treat the whole as an insanitary area, and for this Board to pass a resolution
and direct such a scheme to be prepared.
If any other course be adopted, at the most only a partial and patchwork
amelioration will be the result. New buildings will be more or less unsatisfactorily
intermingled with the old, and, like the proposed reconstruction of
Dove Court, which has already been sanctioned by the Board, the new paths
will be still more devious than the old, and factories or warehouses take the
place of dwelling'!.
I am sorry I cannot give you the death-rate of this area, as this Board
does not possess the requisite death returns, and it was only at the beginning
of this year that I obtained the consent of the Sanitary Committee, confirmed
by the Board, to have the mortality returns sent to us from the Registrars. I
know, however, that in insanitary areas in which statistics have been taken, the
death-rate invariably is very high in comparison with that of hygienic and
sanitary areas.
The population of this area was, at the time of our enumeration, 965
persons, 225 being under 10 years old.
Details of the sanitary condition of each of the houses and premises were
also given in my report.
The following was added in my Annual Report for 1896.