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10
While some of the characteristic restaurants remain, the scene has
altered, the film and other industries have invaded Soho and only about
half of the tailoring families remain. In Soho Square itself once the
resort of the quality, no private residences are now left.
In St. John's Ward, Tufton Street, even thirty-five 'years ago,
presented some of the most ill-conditioned tenements that could be
imagined. In this area the transformation has been as pronounced as
anywhere in the City. Along Millbank handsome office buildings have
replaced the derelict 18th-century houses. The new Westminster
Hospital, a vast repair shop for human machines where kindness vies
with skill in returning them reconditioned for the road, is now surrounded
with office buildings, lofty blocks of flats replacing the old-fashioned streets
of cottages which had made this little old Westminster a hamlet of its
own clustering on both sides of Marsham Street (its " High " Street).
The Minister in Circular 2/50 asks for detailed information of any
action taken under Section 47 of the National Assistance Act. This
Section deals with the compulsory removal from their homes of persons
in need of care and attention. As last year, no occasion for putting
into operation these compulsory powers arose, but that does not mean
that there were no cases in need of institutional treatment. The difficulty
was not their refusal to go into an institution but that of finding suitable
accommodation. The Hospital Authorities plead that there is a grave
shortage of beds for those acutely ill. With the exercise of much
persuasiveness, in some cases fortified with the utmost pertinacity, your
officers have succeeded in obtaining hospital accommodation for those
most in need of care and attention and suffering from grave chronic illness.
It has been noted that the number of such cases coming to the notice of
the Public Health Department has been increasing year by year. The
figures are as follows:—
65 in 1945; 94 in 1946; 132 in 1947;
221 in 1948; .267 in 1949.
One often hears the facile statement that these old people should be
looked after in their own homes, that they are happier in their own homes
and that medical, nursing and home help services should be capable of
securing a reasonable degree of comfort and treatment. For most of the
cases in Westminster this does not hold good. Very few have any known
relative. They live in single rooms and the occasional or even daily visit
of a district nurse and home help, however welcome, does not meet their
needs and sometimes their distress.
The Minister's next special mention is that of water supplies: All
dwellings in the City are supplied by the Metropolitan Water Board
except those blocks of flats with their own deep wells. Ninety-six
premises have their own deep wells. Bacteriological and chemical
analysis of the water from these various wells are made periodically and
are duly reported to this department.
On meat and other foods, the Minister inquires in detail as to the
practice in slaughter houses relating to disease found in carcases, including
tuberculosis. Although there are no slaughter houses in Westminster,