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22
Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
two seventy-five, one seventy-three, two seventy-two, one seventy, two sixty-eight, four
sixty-six, and one sixty-four. We have with us a great number of poor: and poverty
carries along with it many and sore inconveniences, from which there is no escape. One of
these inconveniences is the little choice the poor man possesses in the selection of a habitation.
Ho must needs take that, the rent of which will suit his wages; and should ho have
a family, then is the choice still more narrowed. This accounts for the wretched places in
which numerous families are compelled to live. Far wiser and more beneficial than making
complaints, would be building, or aiding in building, proper dwellings. Those at present
standing in our parish we cannot pull down; neither can we ever put them in a sanatory
condition. Houses will yet have to be built, not for the sake of profit and income, but for
the good of the poor; and it is only when this shall be brought to pass, that one of the
chief difficulties of the sanatory reformer will be removed.
It, however, only remains, that we go onward in our way, "unhasting, yet unresting";
neither creating mistrust nor hatred on the one hand by rash and inconsiderate
proceeding; nor on the other, giving reason for complaint by apathy and lukewarrmnoss.
And thus shall one of the designs for which this Vestry was formed be most successfully
carried out.
HENRY BATESON, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
April 22nd, 1862.