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37
The notifications from the various grouped buildings and
dwellings were:—Northampton Buildings 3, Norman Buildings
3, Cavendish Dwellings, 2, Winton Houses 2, Compton Buildings 1, Corporation Buildings 1, Farringdon Road Buildings 1,
Guinness Buildings 1, Peerless Buildings 1, Pollard Houses 1,
and in the Peabody Buildings as follows:—Farringdon Street 3,
Dufferin Street 2, Errol Street 1, Guest Street 1, Roscoe Street 1.
The Homes and Tenements of the Patients.-Out of
the whole number, excluding lodging houses, 28 were one-roomed
tenements, that is to say, in these tenements the patient and
family lived and slept in one room only. Fifty-eight were tworoomed tenements, the rest had three to six rooms.
Three of the tenements were overcrowded.
Twenty-five tenements had only one cupboard each for food.
Nine had no cupboard accommodation at all.
These are very unsatisfactory conditions for a phthisical
household. When the household utensils of the patient are kept
in the same cupboard as the other household utensils; when his
clothes are hung on the common peg; when he uses the common
towel and washing basin, the common knives, forks, spoons,
cups, saucers and glasses, when the utensils of the household are
all washed together indiscriminately, the spread of infection
from the patient to his family is greatly favoured.
When in addition to these, the tenement is overcrowded, the
conditions for promoting the disease are as pernicious as they
possibly can be. It is difficult to conceive a condition which
favours the spread of the infection more than overcrowding. In
phthisical families, the abatement of overcrowding is insisted
upon forthwith.
Twenty-two tenements were on the list of houses let in
lodgings, 22 tenements were in the so-called "model" buildings,
which, with their common landings and their many points of
contact between the families who occupy them, are only too well
adapted for the spread of phthisis.