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One hundred and forty-eight patients were total abstainers, 207
were said to be moderate drinkers, 21 drank to excess.
Eighty-two families lived and slept, each family in one room.
One hundred and forty-nine families lived each in two rooms. For
these the prevention of infection would be a matter of great
difficulty, if not almost impossible.
Overcrowding was discovered in 24 households.
In 406 homes, excluding common lodging houses, there were
altogether 1,332 other members of the family besides the patient—
these would be naturally in close contact with the disease, and
very liable to be infected. In addition to these close contacts,
there were 2,115 remote contacts living in these houses, so that
there would be altogether 3,447 persons more or less exposed to
infection from the phthisis patients living in their houses.
In making this estimation in the case of tenements in buildings,
regard is only had to the patients in the affected households. This
number does not include the occupants of the tenements on the
same landing as the patient.
There are three types of home circumstanecs which are so
common in Finsbury that they will have to be taken into serious
consideration in any well-matured proposals for dealing with
tuberculosis. In the first type—one or other parent has phthisis.
There are many children, and the family lives in one or, at most,
in two rooms. The father, it may be, is ill, and the mother is
unable to go to work owing to the fact that she has to nurse her
husband. Or, if she is able to go to work, her earnings are
very small, and quite insufficient for the family. In the meantime
the savings of the family are being exhausted or have been spent.
During the mother's absence the children are supervised or fed
by the father, sometimes they are in bed with him, and are consequently
exposed to great risk of infection. The difficulty would
be to a large extent solved if the father went into the poor law
infirmary. This suggestion he refuses to entertain for a single
instant, very often because "he wants to die at home."