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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health,—1893. 43
Metropolitan Ambulance Service.
Stations within or near the parish, containing litters and stretchers, and provided
by the Street Ambulance Branch of the Hospitals Association, for the transfer of sick
and injured persons (infectious cases excepted) are situated as follows:—
Marshalsea Road, at the junction of Mint Street.
Fire Brigade Head Quarters, Southwark Bridge Road.
Fire Brigade Station, Waterloo Road.
St. Thomas's Hospital.
Guy's Hospital, Southwark.
All metropolitan patients suffering from small-pox, fevers, and diphtheria, may,
on application, be conveyed to and fro, and treated free, within the isolation hospitals
of the Asylums Board.
The Ambulance Station nearest the parish is the South-Eastern one, situate at
the New Cross Road (near Old Kent Road Railway Station), S.E.
Telephonic communication can be made from the Health Department (within
office hours), to the chief office of the Asylums Board, and within a few minutes an
ambulance will be on its way, for the conveyance of the patient to the South-Eastern
Hospital (adjoining the South-Eastern Ambulance Station), if suffering from fever or
diphtheria, or to the South Wharf, at Rotherhithe, if it be a case of small-pox. In the
latter case, the patient will embark in one of the ambulance steamers for the hospital
ships at Long Reach.
The Convalescent Hospitals, belonging to the Asylums Board, are two in number.
That for fevers and diphtheria is situated at Winchmore Hill, in the North-East of
London; that for small-pox at Gore Farm, Darenth, distant about four miles from
the hospital Bhips.
Patients in a position to bear the expense of their support, and suffering from
fevers and diphtheria, or small-pox, can be accommodated at the Loudon Fever
Hospital, Liverpool Road, Islington, and at the Highgate Small-pox Hospital,
respectively.
Summary of Report of Sewage Flooding in
Basements.
In accordance with the request of the Chairman of the Main Drainage Committee
of the London County Council, I furnished particulars of twenty cellars in which I
had found evidence of sewage flooding. These basements were all situated in a
main road in your district, and were brought to light in the course of a house-to-house
visitation.
Amongst them were the cellars beneath two large butcher's shops. In one of
them I counted twelve large wooden tubs filled with salted pork and beef, besides
two salting tanks which were in use. A quantity of meat, fresh and salted, lay about
the cellar, or hung suspended from the beams.
Sewage had risen to a height of 2ft., as plainly shown by the marks on the whitewashed
cellar wall. Some of the tubs, I was informed by the occupier's son, had
been floated off their wooden platforms, and a large meat safe at the dead end of the
cellar had also been invaded.
In the cellar belonging to the second butcher, I also found tubs containing salted
meat and three sausage machines, one of which showed signs of recent use. The
sewage in this case had left its mark 15 inches high, corresponding with the upper
portion of the second step of the staircase leading from the cellar.