Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the last three-quarters of the year 1894
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these, to have special regard to the accessibility of the rooms,
more especially from the Southern part of the parish, where there
is most crowding upon area and more of the poorer class
parishioners
I may state that it is likely, since the prime necessity for the
provision in our parish is the conversion of small houses intended
for one family into tenement dwellings housing more than one
family, that such necessity will increase, owing to the growing
difficulties of housing within the Metropolitan area, an increasing
population in the neighbourhood of its work. It is to be hoped
that if such provision is made, that needy parishioners will
recognise the duty which they owe to themselves and their neighbours,
and avail themselves of it.
As a Sanitary Authority we have already taken steps to
secure the registration of houses let in lodgings, and to frame ByeLaws
aiming at the prevention of disease and the reduction of the
facilities for its spread. These Bye-Laws will be of great value to
the Parish of Stoke Newington.
THE FACTORY ACTS.
The amount of sickness and misery created by the unwholesome
conditions under which labour was employed in factories and
workshops has led to special legislation, which aimed at ensuring
that the health of the workers shall no longer be at the mercy of
those whose avarice and greed have in so many instances made
them blind to the health interests of their employees. In the
Act of 1878 an effort was made to consolidate and materially
extend the whole of previous factory legislation; that of 1891
proceeded still further in enforcing efficient sanitation. By the
Act of 1891 the Factory Inspector is no longer called upon to see
that factories and workshops are kept in a cleanly and sanitary
condition ; he has merely to notify the condition of the premises to
the Medical Officer of Health of the district, whose duty it now is
to put the law in operation, and so far as domestic workshops are