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the Union who received Poor Law Belief during the year 1926 : —
Indoor Relief 1,156 persons
Outdoor Relief 482 cases
Outdoor Medical Relief 294 persons
Of the total number of 522 deaths, 370 died in hospitals and public institutions
either within or without the Borough.
SANITARY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE BOROUGH.
Scavenging.
The removal of house and trade refuse is carried out by contract. In the
main thoroughfares, and in a number of other principal streets, there is a daily
collection. In the remainder of the streets the collection is twice weekly.
The Council has made arrangements with the contractor for the
substitution of motor vehicles in place of horse-drawn waggons for the removal of
house and trade refuse. Two horse-drawn vehicles are retained for use in streets
where large motor vehicles would be inconvenient and in streets congested with
market traffic.
The collection of house refuse from the main streets is now completed by
9 a.m., the householders being required to put the bins on the kerb of the footway
in front of their premises between the hours of 6 and 8 a.m.
This earlier daily collection has worked well.
In a very large majority of the houses in the Borough, the old large fixed
ashpits have been replaced by movable sanitary ashbins.
The number of notices served for the absence of, or defective, ashbins was 57.
The Disposal of Holborn House Refuse.
When the refuse is removed from the Borough it is taken first to the contractor's depot
where it is "forked" over for the extraction of paper, straw and other combustible matter
which is at once destroyed by burning in destructors. In the course of the "forking" parts
of the refuse are salvaged, e.g., tin cans and other metal articles, bottles, glass, rags, bones,
also bread and other food material for sale to pig breeders. The remaining refuse, including
cinders directly from the household refuse, is loaded into barges and conveyed, at present, to
dumps on brickfields at Sittingbourne, for use in brick-making. The "forking" at the
contractor's yard is carried out immediately on the delivery of the refuse and there is regular
daily barging so that undue accumulations of Holborn refuse or nuisances arising therefrom
are avoided.
Occasional visits are paid to the contractor's depot to supervise the arrangements for
dealing with the refuse from the Borough.
The refuse is conveyed by barge from the contractor's wharf at Vauxhall to fields outside
Sittingbourne belonging to a large firm of brick-makers. The refuse is deposited on to
the land for subsequent use in connection with the industry carried on there. The site
of the brick-making fields is on the banks of the River Thames, a short distance from
Sittingbourne, the nearest residences being about one mile away, at the village of Conyer,