View report page

11
from club houses and hotels and upon offal, entrails, liver and blood
from slaughter houses. This offensive food, often in a high state of
decomposition when brought to the place, is boiled down in coppers and
the fat separated for sale. The number of pigs varies from one to
two thousand (as many as three thousand have been kept) in filthy and
badly paved styes close to the houses. The drainage, in nearly all cases
very defective, permits the liquid manure to run over the yards, saturating
the ground to a great depth, contaminating all the wells with putrid matter
and polluting the atmosphere for a considerable distance around There
were, until lately, several immense accumulations of stagnant water into
which this pig matter found its way. One enormous piece called "The
Ocean" formerly occupied nearly an acre of ground. It was covered with
filthy slime and bubbling with poisonous gases caused with the drainage
of pig styes and privies flowing into it.
The general death rate varies from 40 to 60 per annum, of these
deaths the very large proportion of 87•5% are under five years of age, and
nearly all the deaths occur from zymotic disease. The most appalling
fact, however, connected with this subject and the one most likely to make
a deep sensation in the public mind is that for a period of three years the
average age at death is under 12 years."
From the report it also appears that the drainage in Kensington
generally left much to be desired. The Medical Officer of Health complained
of offensive cesspools and open privies, and strongly recommended that "all
places at present imperfectly or not at all provided therewith, should be
immediately furnished with that great requisite of health - drainage."
It will be seen that the Medical Officer of Health was concerned
with the major problems of a high death rate, enormous child mortality rate,
high death rates from infectious disease, impure water supply, inefficient
scavenging and drainage, public health nuisances, infected food, food
adulteration, bad housing and occupational hazards.
Some of these problems have been solved by voluntary action;
some by official action under national or local legislation; some by
progress in medical science. Some of the problems have been removed;
some are under routine control; others are still with us and new ones have
been added.
The remainder of the nineteenth century saw the establishment
of a great London drainage system, first proposed in 1856 and completed in
1875» an elaborate system of street cleansing, refuse collection and
disposal, paving and maintenance of streets and roads, street lighting,
nuisance abatement, epidemic control and the establishment of public baths
and washhouaes, but nevertheless, at the end of the century many problems
remained and Kensal New Town was added.
Kensal New Town, originally under the control of Chelsea Council,
was built about 90 years ago and described by the Hon. Charles Booth as
"endowed with most of the features which in London would combine towards
leading to poverty and low life - a canal and railway, gas works, isolation
and the washing industry. Because of the latter, it was known as "Soap
Suds Island". It was colonized by the riff raff from the slums of
Tyburnia on the construction of the Great Western Railway and those from
Lisson Grove on the construction of the Great Central Railway. It became
one of the most notorious slums in London.
About this time, the so-called Notting Dale Special Area was
receiving particular attention. It was an accumulation of 280 slum
houses, including 23 common lodging houses and 216 houses let in lodgings,
in the area now occupied by Henry Dickens Court. Two hundred and ten of
the houses had major sanitary or structural defects. It was populated by
4,000 persons, the number per house varying from 10 to 21.6. These people
had been displaced from Jennings Buildings, the Clanricarde Gardens area,
or the St. Giles Circus district when redevelopment had taken place. A
contemporary report refers to "the vicious proclivities and evil habits in
the neighbourhood." It mentions overcrowding, drunkenness, prostitution