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95
Cleansing of Old People.—Section 43 of the London County
Council (General Powers) Act, 1953, provides for the cleansing of
any aged person in the district who :
(a) is verminous or for any other reason in need of cleansing
in order to prevent injury or the danger of injury to
health ; and
(b) is so enfeebled that he is unable to avail himself of any
facilities for cleansing himself provided by the authority
under any enactment or to cleanse himself properly
In this respect, during the current year, 1,763 baths were given
to dirty or verminous elderly persons at the Cleansing Station and
2,007 home baths were effected. Figures for the previous year
were 1,348 and 2,017 respectively and in 1961 the figures were 538
and 1,499.
Laundry Service.—Under Section 122 of the Public Health
(London) Act, 1936, the Council is empowered to cause to be
cleansed " any articles which are filthy, dangerous or unwholesome
and liable to affect or endanger health." Advantage has been taken
not only of this section but also Sections 124 and 194 to introduce a
laundry service in order to deal suitably with what has always been
a major problem, namely, the treatment of badly soiled clothes
bed-linen, etc., from the homes of elderly people.
Cases in need of such assistance are brought to the notice of the
department by Hospitals, District Nurses, Doctors and by ordinary
routine investigation of complaints.
From the Council's limited stocks of bedding and clothing it is
possible in certain circumstances for temporary supplies of linen,
etc., to be made to people whose own is being laundered, and
co-operation with voluntary organisations often results in the repair
or replacement of outworn articles.
By the end of the year the laundry service, supervised by the
Lady Public Health Inspector, had been extended to 237 separate
individuals and during the current year, the staff at the Cleansing
Station have dealt with 54,696 articles which were collected,
laundered and delivered.
Greenwich Hotel—Westgate-on-Sea.
General.—For several reasons, mainly financial, holidays for
the elderly of the Borough have had to be arranged to be taken
at "out of season" times. More recently, other Boroughs have
been making increasing demands on the available holiday accommodation and the position is becoming even more difficult.
Hitherto, the Council have had no property of their own
which could have been utilised to ease this particular situation.