View report page

2
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Metropolitan Borough of Battersea.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I present, herewith, an abbreviated report upon the health
and sanitary condition of the Borough during the year 1939.
The report is presented in this form in accordance with advice
from the Ministry of Health.
During the year the Borough Council's Maternity Hospital
at 19/20, Bolingbroke Grove was closed. The steps leading up
to this were fully stated in the report for 1938. The Council
established an additional clinic for diseases peculiar to women,
which opened at Southlands on the 6th June, 1939, under the
control of Miss A. Bloomfield, m.d., f.r.c.s., f.r.c.o.g., and to
which post-natal cases were also referred.
The provisions of the Factory Act dealing with basement
bakehouses came into operation during the year, but the number of
premises affected in the Borough is small.
The vital statistics set out in the following pages indicate,
on the whole, satisfactory health conditions. The infant mortality
rate, however, is somewhat high compared with the rate for the
country as a whole and is due almost entirely to a particularly
high death rate in the first quarter of the year. The maternal
mortality rate was below the average, and the incidence of infectious
disease was unusually low.
The staff, on the outbreak ???ar, were to a large extent employed
temporarily in Civil Defence work, chiefly in connection
with one or other of the casualty services, but, in due course, normal
duties were, in the main, resumed.
I have the honour to be,
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) G. MACDONALD,
Medical Officer of Health.
Electric House,
Lavender Hill, S.W.l l.
January, 1941.