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24
Water
Section 95, Public Health (London) Act, 1936
The number of new dwellings for which applications were received
for certificates that a proper and sufficient supply of water had been
installed was 455, relating to 140 dwellings erected by the Borough
Council, 226 by the County Council, and 89 by private enterprise.
The water supply for the area is provided almost entirely by the
Metropolitan Water Board, but there are a few deep wells of which
some supply water for purposes other than human consumption,
while in a few cases the supply is used for potable purposes both for
drinking on the premises as well as for the manufacture of beverages
and for similar trade purposes. In these latter cases a comprehensive
examination of the supply both bacteriological as well as chemical
is made every three months at least, which is deemed sufficient for
ample warning of any serious changes to be observed before there
is danger to health.
Prevalence and Control Over Infectious and
Other Diseases
The mortality from infectious disease was again comparatively
insignificant, scarlet fever, 0, diphtheria 2, measles 4, and whooping
cough 2.
Measles is much less of a danger to life than it was between the wars.
Whooping cough on the other hand seems to retain much of its
virulence, the deaths in the ten years 1928-37 averaging 23.4
every year, highest 58 in 1929, and lowest, 2 in 1930.
The accompanying chart shows the incidence of diphtheria since
1895, and shows that the dramatic fall began in 1939 before the
outbreak of war and at least two years before the national scheme
for immunisation had had time to be effective. The rate to which
the incidence rose in 1942 might, however, have been much higher
but for the success of the national campaign. The two deaths
recorded were from faucial diphtheria, and the ages two years and
four years.
Measles has been notified in Lambeth since 1917, and the chart
shows the extraordinary regularity with which epidemics occurred
every other year up to 1939-40, and then when black-out conditions
and the crowding caused by war might well have been expected to
exact a heavier toll than usual the expected epidemic failed to
appear for some reason which has not been explained. Now that
the disease is getting into its stride again the chart indicates that,
instead of a two-year there is a three-year cycle, but it would seem
that the epidemics are spread over two years instead of beginning
and ending in one calendar year. Although the incidence shows
little change over the years, apart from the break in the early war
period, the case mortality has fallen considerably.