View report page

accord with such a scheme, for the arrangement is only from year
to year, and we know exactly the amount. Tuberculosis dispensaries
may in the future be found not to justify the expenditure and
time bestowed upon them; in such a case it is surely a great
advantage to be under a yearly agreement rather than be saddled
with a staff and buildings which can no longer be turned to account.
Whether the dispensary is going to play an important part in
the diminution of tuberculosis the future alone can tell, but an
experiment should either be tried wholeheartedly or left alone, and
the probable cost devoted to other means for combating the disease.
In May, 1913, the Guardians of Southwark, whose Infirmary
is adjacent to East Dulwich Station, started a campaign against
the use of the siding for loading trucks from the carts which had
collected the household refuse from the houses in the neighbourhood.
The story of the attack is best told in the letters, complaints and
and reports we have received, which I set out below.
A letter was received in 1906 calling attention to the accumulations
of rubbish on the railway siding near East Dulwich Station.
The Sanitary Inspector visited and reported no nuisance. There
is no record of any further complaint concerning the dust until May,
1913, when the St. Saviour's Guardians forwarded the following
report from their Medical Superintendent.
I beg to draw the earnest attention of the Committee to the very serious
menace to the health of the staff and inmates occasioned by the manner in which
the dust-bin refuse is handled on the railway siding in the immediate proximity
to the Infirmary. The nuisance has increased and has now reached a pitch which
amounts to a gross scandal, and this in spite of protests made in the past.
During the whole of every week-day dust-carts are unloaded into trucks.
With the wind in any northerly direction this means that all the dust from refuse
is blown straight into the Infirmary wards, while paper, &c., is strewn in the
grounds. The trucks are overladen, which makes it worse.
With more or less delay, a tarpaulin is fixed over them when full, and some
time during the night they are removed. They may be left half full and quite
uncovered over the whole of Sunday.
I submit that it is absolutely improper to carry out this insanitary work in
the immediate neighbourhood of an Infirmary, or indeed of dwelling houses at all.
The siding itself is in a disgraceful state, with heaps of refuse lying and
breeding disease, while trucks overloaded with manure are frequently kept standing
on it for many hours, poisoning the whole neighbourhood.
I have no doubt at all that outbreaks of diarrhœa which have occurred in
the summer among the infants in the Infirmary, and, from what I have heard, in
the neighbourhood also, result from this nuisance, for which the local sanitary
authority who authorise it and the railway company who allow it on the premises
are responsible.
The matter was considered by the Public Health and the
Works and General Purposes Committees of the Council, both of
whom surveyed the railway siding.
Further reports from the Medical Superintendent were sent to
the Borough Council by the Visiting Committee of St. Saviour's
Infirmary:—
June 9th.—"With reference to the nuisance arising from dust-bill refuse on the
Railway siding, I have to report that during last week the refuse has been handled
in, if anything, a more scandalous and wicked manner than ever, and since Friday
last a large pile of refuse has been standing on the siding with paper and foul dust
from it blowing into the Infirmary grounds."