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typhoid fever was likely to prevail that the latrines and urinals of
such institutions should be overhauled.
The sanitary arrangements of the board schools were on the whole
found to be in a tair condition, but those of the Church schools in
some instances were far from satisfactory.
At the Aberdeen Congress of the Royal Institute of Public
Health, Professor Hamilton, in his address on the "Dangers of
Spreading Disease," stated :—
"Schools and Public Places.
"With all the improvements which have taken place in the construction
of Board schools, I am of opinion that they are still lacking
in one particular, and that a most important one, namely, in facilities
for frequently cleansing the walls and flooring. My own conviction
is that schools ought to be waterproof compartments, as it were, the
walls tiled or covered with waterproof cement, the roof and flooring
similarly waterproof, and that every schoolroom ought to be hosed or
otherwise cleansed at least once a week, that spitting on the floors
should be forbidden, and that schoolmasters ought to be specially
instructed in the dangers accruing to the practice. The interior of a
schoolroom, to my way of thinking, should be constructed on the
type of a ship's deck, where impurities may be got rid of bv the free
use of water and scrubbing. Ventilation, however good, will never
remove the dust which clings to the walls and flooring of such an
apartment; indeed in large towns it usually adds to it."
Upon enquiry at the various schools in Poplar and Bromley, it was
found that the walls and ceilings of the class rooms are cleansed and
distempered once in four years, and the walls swept down three times
a year.
The Committee directed that the attention of the London School
Board be called to the remarks of Professor Hamilton, and to the