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8
makes reference to the dockyard in his diary, while Peter the Great
worked here as a ship's carpenter. The birth of the ironclad saw the
beginning of the end of Deptford as a royal dockyard, the site being
taken over as a foreign cattle market by the City Corporation in 1872.
These very scanty references serve to indicate the occupations of the
lieges in remote days, so we turn, with interest, to the Deptford of
to-day. There are two ways in which we can study occupations.
There is firstly the records of the Registrar-General, mainly an array of
statistics; secondly, there are the records of the Medical Officer of
Health and the Inspector of Factories and Workshops, made by
personal visits of enquiry and inspection. In previous reports I have
noted the Registrar-General's statistics, and it is not necessary to
recapitulate the same. From these we gather that amongst men 123
out of every 1,000 are engaged in metal work, 119 are unoccupied and
retired, 86 are in commercial, financial and insurance occupations.
The list gradually works through clerks and draughtsmen 68, water
transport workers 53, road transport workers 51, wood workers 36,
railway workers 35, to the occupations of upholsterer 2, makers of drinks
2, textile workers 1. As regards women, of every 1,000 occupied,
personal service (domestic, charwomen, laundresses, waitresses) claim
252, clerks and draughtsmen 160, makers of textile goods and articles
of dress 125, down to electrical apparatus makers and fitters 7, etc.
These but touch upon the fringe, and those interested will find ample
scope for study in my Survey Report of last year. Meanwhile, I would
draw attention to this subject in my remarks in the course of this
report under " Factories and Workshops," where the reader will gain
an insight into the occupations and conditions at work of many
Deptford citizens of to-day. What are social conditions ? They
involve a study of places where people work, the houses they live in,
the amenities (a good old Scottish word meaning the surroundings,
particularly as regards modern comforts and necessaries, e.g., parks,
open spaces, conveniences in general, good sanitation), facilities for
education, religious instruction, theatres, halls, opera, art, etc. Social
conditions certainly include wages, for you cannot enjoy to a great
extent unless you have good work and wages. Wages raise the question
of housing and food, and these two are the keystones to the study of
tuberculosis. The expression, "social conditions," therefore, involves
a widespread study. Very briefly then, the local social conditions are
these. Deptford is mainly an industrial borough in which there are too