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V
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Royal Borough of Kensington.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit the Aunual Report of the Medical Officer of
Health, which contains, in accordance with the Regulations of the Local Government
Board, a summary of the action taken for the prevention of disease, and
an account of the Sanitary state of the Royal Borough during the year 1914.
In August, 1914, owing to the outbreak of war, your Medical Officer of
Health, Dr. J. E. Sandilands, was called away as a member of the Territorial
Forces, to undertake active military medical duties in the field, and early in the
autumn your Council appointed me as Acting Medical Officer of Health during
Dr. Sandilands' absence. Other changes in the constitution of the staff of the
Public Health Department, owing to the war, are the absence of Mr. McQuinn,
Sanitary Inspector, who enlisted, with the Council's consent, on the 28th April,
1915; the absence of Mr. Wilson, Clerk in the Department, who enlisted on the
12th September, 1914; and the absence of Miss McKay, Health Visitor, from
October, 1914, to April, 1915, to undertake military nursing in a war hospital.
It has not been thought necessary to provide substitutes for Messrs. McQuinn and
Wilson, nor for Miss McKay during her six months' period of absence.
Notwithstanding the decrease of personnel, I am sure that the work of the
Department has been carried on with its usual efficiency, and this result is largely
to be attributed to the zeal and loyalty of the staff, and more especially to the
unremitting attention of the Chief Sanitary Inspector, Mr. G. Pettit, to whose
long experience and intimate acquaintance with all the Sanitary circumstances of
the Borough I am greatly indebted in carrying out the duties of Acting Medical
Officer of Health.
I have the honour to be,
Your obedient Servant,
LOUIS C. PARKES.
21st June, 1915.