London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Bermondsey 1905
Report on the sanitary condition of the Borough of Bermondsey for the year 1905
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I should be inclined to attribute some part of the diminution to the various precautionary
measures which have been taken by the Borough Council, how much it is impossible to say.
Such measures have taken the form of instructions on infant feeding which were delivered to
every family in the Borough to start with, and have been sent systematically to families where
there have been births from April onwards. Besides there were various notices on this subject
not only in the local press, which devoted a large space in one issue to the action of the Council,
but notices have from time to time appeared in the other metropolitan papers on the action of
the various sanitary bodies on the same subject.
All education is necessarily slow, but signs are coming that the middle classes have taken
the subject seriously, and that some of the information has begun to percolate into those classes
for which it is intended.
Table H.
| Weeks. | Temperature of the Air. | Temperature of ground 3 feet below surface. | Rainfall. | Deaths from Diarrhœa. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1904. | 1905. | 1904. | 1905. | 1904. | 1905. | 1904. | 1905. | |
| ° | ° | ° | ° | ins. | ins. | |||
| July | 67.1 | 65.2 | 63.58 | 63.59 | 0.04 | 0.02 | 10 | 4 |
| 65.4 | 66.3 | 64.23 | 64.21 | 1.83 | 0.53 | 10 | 8 | |
| 68.1 | 62.2 | 64.53 | 64.19 | 0.08 | 0.65 | 25 | 14 | |
| August | 61.0 | 60.3 | 64.62 | 63.04 | 0.06 | 0.16 | 20 | 16 |
| 59.5 | 62.1 | 63.26 | 62.62 | 0.47 | 0.03 | 29 | 17 | |
| 57.6 | 60.2 | 61.58 | 62.37 | 0.22 | 0.48 | 23 | 13 | |
| 61.0 | 56.7 | 61.37 | 61.33 | 1.01 | 1.21 | 17 | 13 | |
| September | 57.0 | 61.0 | 60.57 | 60.97 | 0.36 | 0.68 | 8 | 7 |
| 56.4 | 54.2 | 59.29 | 59.96 | 0.24 | 0.33 | 5 | 4 | |
| 53.6 | 54.3 | 58.13 | 58.47 | 0.20 | 0.01 | 9 | 8 | |
| 52.1 | 53.0 | 56.72 | 57.43 | 0.14 | 1.27 | 5 | 8 | |
| October | 50.3 | 48.8 | 56.03 | 56.10 | 0.86 | 0.16 | 1 | 3 |
| 47.8 | 48.6 | 54.46 | 54.45 | 0.02 | 0.16 | 6 | 4 | |
| 54.9 | 41.0 | 53.74 | 52.35 | 0.43 | 0.13 | 2 | 2 | |
| Weekly average | 58.0 | 56.71 | 60.15 | 60.08 | 0.42 | 0.41 | 12 | 9 |
Table I.— Deaths from Diarrhœa.
| Year. | Cases Inquired into. | State of Premises. | Family. | Method of Feeding. | Overcrowding | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good. | Fair. | Defective. | Clean and Careful. | Dirty and Improvident. | Breast. | Artificially. | Partially by Both Methods. | |||
| 1901 | 74 | 49 | 23 | 2 | 70 | 4 | 13 | 59 | 2 | – |
| 1902 | 40 | 21 | 18 | 1 | 37 | 3 | 6 | 33 | 1 | 1 |
| 1903 | 40 | 15 | 22 | 3 | 38 | 2 | 8 | 29 | 8 | – |
| 1904 | 115 | 55 | 54 | 6 | 101 | 14 | 16 | 82 | 17 | – |
| 1905 | 65 | 33 | 29 | 3 | 56 | 9 | 5 | 56 | 4 | 1 |
| Total | 334 | 173 | 146 | 15 | 302 | 32 | 48 | 259 | 27 | 2 |
This table once again confirms the advantages of breast feeding. There is no doubt that
artificial feeding is one of the great evils of the present day, and all efforts to improve the food of
infants must be directed in the place to an endeavour to get mothers to suckle their infants.
Artificial feeding should only be resorted to when a mother's milk cannot be got. Milk untreated
by cooking or preservatives, i.e., fresh, is a living food. It contains ferments and organised
substances, which come direct from the mother's body, and all cooking and doctoring take away
from its nutritive value. The organic and chemical combinations of milk are so complex that
we are as yet unable to get beyond anything but a very coarse analysis, and for this reason
efforts should be directed to getting a pure supply which does not require cooking or preservatives
to keep it.
Tubercular Diseases.
The number of deaths from all forms of tubercular diseases in 1905 was 325, against 350
in 1904.
This figure comprises 217 for Bermondsey, 85 for Rotherhithe, and 23 for St. Olave's. Of
this 825, 223 were due to phthisis, and 102 to the other tubercular diseases. By this there was
a diminution of 34 on the year previous and of 38 on the ten years' average, There was a slight
increase of 9 deaths in the tubercular diseases other than phthisis during 1905 —the actual
numbers being 102 and 93 — but it is probably accidental.
Phthisis.
In Table J will be found particulars of deaths from phthisis since the year 1895. There
were 223 deaths due to this cause, which is a diminution of 34 over 1904. There is no doubt