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5
To the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Aldermen
and Councillors of the City of Westminster.
My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit my report on the public health and sanitary conditions
of the City for the year 1947. The scope of this report is
prescribed by the Minister of Health who requests that it should again
be in abbreviated form (Circular 13/47) as has been the practice ever
since the outbreak of war in 1939.
This is the last report which I shall make dealing with a complete
year of the operations of those services which were transferred from the
Council to other authorities under Part III of the National Health
Service Act, 1946. They ceased to be the responsibility of the City
Council on 5th July, 1948.
In the period of 48 years since the City Council was formed there have
been two Medical Officers of Health, the late Ur. F. J. Allan and myself,
each having served as Medical Officer of Health for a period of approximately
24 years. When Dr. Allan was appointed in 1901 these personal
health services did not exist. It was largely due to him that between
1902 and 1904 Maternity and Child Welfare, Care of Consumptives, and
other personal health services came into being in Westminster. This
was probably earlier than in most parts of the country. It was a period
when the spirit of voluntary service was strong and there was no lack of
willing helpers with experience of social problems. They had the time
to spare and the means to contribute to the material side of the movement
for in those early days voluntary bodies could not look for Government
grants. All this voluntary service was organised in a body established
as the Westminster Health Society. The Society now in its 45th year
still actively maintains its maternity and child welfare service in one
area of the City. It was first in the field in Westminster, many years
before the City Council was legally empowered to promote such services,
and has survived to see the City Council itself deprived of those powers
granted only some thirty-odd years ago. Under the National Health
Service Act of 1946 all the staff responsible for maternity and child
welfare, tuberculosis dispensary and other services and the buildings in
which they work were automatically transferred to the London County
Council and the Regional Hospital Board on 5th July of this year. I
have already in a small booklet issued by the Council earlier this year
made somewhat full reference to the origin and rise of the personal health
services in Westminster and shall do no more than mention that I am
proud to have been associated in the development of these services in
the founding of which my predecessor, Dr. Allan, played so considerable
a part in the early years of the century.