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involved. Also it must be realised that the London county council is
itself a local authority as far as accidents in the home are concerned and
in fact the power given to metropolitan boroughs under the 1957 LCC
(General Powers) Act, namely to be able to disseminate information
and advice, could be interpreted as a very limited power. Further, if a
home safety committee were set up it would, as far as the borough council
is concerned, be merely advisory and would normally make reports to
the Public Health committee for such action as the latter committee
could take. Because of these difficulties it was decided, early in 1959,
that the Public Health committee would continue to supervise local
home safety work directly.
The parallel powers of the county council and the borough council
are to some extent an embarrassment and this has particularly shown
itself in the collection of information—a basic necessity.
Although certain things can be done in the way of propaganda,
educational leaflets and so on to exhort the public, it is likely that no
major remedial step can be taken until more knowledge is obtained of
the fundamental reasons for accidents, and of their local pattern. The
best approach from this angle at present is to collect as much statistical
information as possible and with this in mind I approached the hospitals
following the receipt of the Ministry's circular last year, and I asked
them for some simple information on accident cases. In view of the
possible reaction of the hospital authorities that they were not entitled
to disclose the name and address of the accident case without the case's
formal consent, I asked that at this stage I should be informed merely
of the road in which the case lived and preferably the initials of
the patient so that if necessary identification could be made at a later
date if further investigation were then required.
Owing perhaps in part to some duplication of requests for information,
I have not yet had a reply from the Lewisham Group Hospital
Management Committee as to whether they can furnish me with the
simple information requested, but I have had complete cooperation
from the Sydenham Children's Hospital (which is in the area of another
management committee) and the information obtained from that
hospital is being analysed and is already forming a useful background
for possible extension of our work here in the future. The hospital
takes in children from many districts and details of those accidents which
belong to boroughs other than Lewisham are sent on by me to the
medical officer of health concerned.
The collection of home accident statistics is to some extent a long.
term process and it is only by obtaining the knowledge and studying it
and analysing it that one has a chance of showing different groups of
accidents which may be more preventable than other groups, or certain
localities which appear to be more accident.prone than others. It would
of course be on those that any work of the department would be particularly
brought to bear.
The accompanying table indicates in detail the figures for
Lewisham cases reported from the Sydenham Children's Hospital for