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during the War had greatly aggravated the shortage which had
set in some years previously, and consequently, public health
authorities immediately set to work to see how far and how soon
these conditions could be remedied. Special attention was not
only paid to Maternity and Child Welfare work and housing, but
to every other public health activity carried on by Municipal
Authorities.
One of the first results in Bermondsey was that in 1919,
two Assistant Medical Officers and four additional temporary
Inspectors were appointed for twelve months to report on the
sanitary condition of the houses in the Borough, and on their
reports two considerable areas, the Salisbury Street and the
Dockhead areas, were represented under the Housing Acts to the
Borough Council and the London County Council respectively, as
being insanitary areas. The rebuilding of these areas has been
very largely completed at the time of writing.
The last stage in the organization of the Department was in
the year 1925, when Mr. E. C. Freeman was appointed as Chief
Sanitary Inspector. All the Inspectors, with the exception of the
Wharves Inspectors—who were immediately under the Medical
Officer of Health—were placed under his supervision. He was
further given charge of the markets, with an additional Inspector
to help him, and in 1927 he was given charge of the Housing under
the Medical Officer of Health. As during this period also the
whole of the drainage, new and old, was handed over to this
Department, it became further necessary to appoint a Drainage
Inspector. The net result of this is that we have one Chief
Inspector, seven District Inspectors, one Market Inspector, one
Drainage Inspector, one Housing Inspector, one Food and Drugs
Inspector, and two Wharves Inspectors, making a total of fourteen
including the Chief Inspector.
Among the post-war developments which have come to the
front, as mentioned in my five years' survey in 1925, are the
questions of the prevention and treatment of dental diseases.
There were several factors which caused the Council to consider
the advisability of providing a dentist with a fully-equipped
dental surgery. The London County Council had provision for
attending to the teeth of children at their schools, but there was