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22 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
SECTION III—SPECIAL REPORTS.
As Medical Officer of Health for the Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark,
my attention has been drawn to Extracts from a letter from Mr. C. J. Edwards (copy
appended) to the Local Government Board. In connection therewith I have been
instructed to prepare a Special Report for presentation to the Local Government Board.
Mr. C. J. Edwards, proprietor of the Bridge House Tavern, 30, Borough Road, in the
letter in question complained of the "disgraceful and dangerous state" of the tenements
in King James Street, Southwark. He spoke generally of the high death rate of the
parish, and requested a sanitary report in the undermentioned places:—
Sussex House (King James Street), Gun Street, Flint Street, Hill Street (Borough
Road,) Market Street (Borough Road), Gray Street, and Pontypool Place. Finally, he
objected to a public urinal situated near the Obelisk.
The following report will deal—1st, with details of the above places taken in order
as mentioned; 2nd, with the general remarks made by Mr. Edwards; 3rd, comments
on numbers 1 and 2.
PART I.
King James Street, is a medium-sized thoroughfare 20 feet across from house to
house. The roadway is of macadam which requires repairing, the foot pavement is
good but the gutters are defective It contains about 50 houses, which are on the
whole in fair repair, especially Numbers 20 to 38 (even numbers inclusive) which are
comparatively new. For the most part they are 4, 6, and 8 roomed houses, with small
back yards. From time to time during the past five years, I have visited all—or almost
all—the houses in this street, and have not noticed anything much amiss with the
interiors. The population is dense, but not more so than other parts of the District.
There are many children, who perforce make a play-ground of the street.
Drainage.—Closets are in the back yards. No complaints have been made to me
as to drainage or sewers in this street. Sussex House is a large industrial dwelling
with its main entrance opening on King James Street. It has 21 tenements of one or
two rooms each and is generally full of tenants. It is in an average state of repair.
The water supply is from cisterns. The water closets are of the long-hopper pattern
flushed from separate cisterns. Soil pipes and drains are ventilated, but by means of
the soil pipes only. Complaints as to this house have been mainly defects in the
closets, dirty rooms, and overcrowding. On the 11th, Febuary 1897, however, I found
the passage at the back of the ground-floor flooded with 3½ inches of fluid apparently
due to a back flow from the sewers. The main sewers in Silex Street and King James
Street were opened up and a blockage removed, when the Sussex house basement was
relieved of the flooding.
Gun Street is a thoroughfare 28 feet wide, with macadam roadway, foot pavement,
and channelling all in fair repair. It is formed by two large buildings, namely, Gun
Street Artisans' Dwellings, Blocks, 1 and 2, which contain 56 one and two roomed tenements.
These buildings are densely populated