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During the year, all my colleagues in the Public Health Department
have worked well, energetically supported, as usual, by the Chairman
of the Health Committee, Miss E. A. Coles, J.P., to whom I once again
extend my thanks for her help and guidance. I should like also to
thank all the staff of the Health Department, particularly Mr. Weeks,
the Chief Public Health Inspector, and Dr. Lowry, for their help and
assistance during the year.
I have the honour to be, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
J. TUDOR LEWIS,
Medical Officer of Health.
August, 1959.
Public Health in Retrospect
1858-1958.
Last year I gave an extract from a report made by one of my
Predecessors one hundred years ago. This year I continue the record
with extracts from a report made by Dr. Connor, Medical Officer of
Health for the Battersea Parish, in 1858.
"I regret to state the health of the sub-district compared with that
of the previous year is not so favourable.
"The amount of sickness that prevailed is less, but the rate of
mortality greater; which last is attributable to a very severe and fatal
epidemics of scarlet fever, that prevailed in the last two quarters, and
which has been much increased by the unhealthy practice of pig-keeping
-a very general custom in the parish, and to which I took occasion to
direct the attention of your Board in November last.
"It is remarkable, but nothing more than could have been expected,
that the mortality fell with great violence on pig-keeping districtsparticularly
on localities where it is most general and most crowded."
"This excess, (the number of deaths of children under 10 years
over the number at all other ages from disease) it will be seen, is not
peculiar to this sub-district, but appears to be everywhere the result of
a crowded industrial population, engaged principally in factory and
field labour.
"The employment of women in these occupations, the majority of
whom are there, is an evil for which the present condition of society,
it is believed, is quite incompetent to supply an effectual remedy."
". . . the opinion entertained by your Health Officers, viz.: that
as the end and aim of all the sanitation with the execution of which
local authorities have been recently charged by the legislature, is to
eradicate diseases, or to deprive them of their fatality; to strengthen the
healthy and to assist the suffering, so must it be their unceasing
endeavour to carry their greatest reforms into and about the dwellingplaces
of the indigent; for nothing can be less open to dispute than that,
in proportion as sickness and its consequences can be diminished amongst
the poor of this great nation, will prosperity accrue to it, the best interests
of the community at large be promoted, civilization advanced, and the
fullest harmony of corporeal existence amongst all classes secured."