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have still further knit together the ties existing between the two bodies.
A very close relationship with St. George's and Charing Cross
Hospitals was built up during the war because these two played an
essential part in dealing with air raid casualties. In the early stages
of the war First Aid Posts were set up at St. John's Skin Hospital, at
the Children's Hospital, Vincent Square, and at the Women's Hospital,
Soho Square, while a larger First Aid Post and Decontamination Centre
were instituted at Westminster Hospital itself. The City Council was
responsible for the first aid services and found the authorities of the
various hospitals most willing and helpful agents. The community of
interests then established has left behind a friendly atmosphere which
has engendered ease of co-operation in the public service.
This, the twenty-eighth annual report which I have submitted to
the City Council as its Medical Officer of Health will be my last and
I beg leave to introduce a personal note. At the end of this present month
of July I shall have completed forty years in the public health service,
thirty-seven of them in the service of the City Council. To serve this
Council has been an honour and a privilege and is so regarded far outside
the confines of its own City Hall. I consider myself indeed fortunate in
having been for so long the adviser on public health to this renowned
Corporation and in being the executive officer administering the many
measures designed to safeguard the health of the community. I cannot
imagine a company of more considerate and understanding civic masters.
I do not propose to pass in retrospect the changes in the health and
housing conditions of the City during this period. This was the subject
of special comment in my annual reports for 1949 and 1950, the period
of the Jubilee of the City as one of the Metropolitan Boroughs. My only
comment is that it has been a time of steady and well ordered progress
in the City's public health. The City Council, while eschewing proposals
of ephemeral repute, has left nothing undone which seemed worth doing
for the health and welfare of its citizens. While the rateable value of
the City has risen by a half there have been developments in the Council's
services in all of which I have been an interested observer. They include
the remarkable expansion of new housing; the ever widening responsibilities
in the legal and administrative spheres ; the evolution of civil
engineering and the influence of town planning ; the increasing complexity
of municipal finance ; the modernization of methods in public cleansing ;
and the growing appetite of the public for the varied fare provided by
the libraries. These services are sharing in the broad purposes of fostering
the well being of the citizens and thereby enhancing the good name of
the City.
In all my years of service I have been sustained by a staff whose
devotion and competence have long been to me a source of pride. Of
those in the department when I entered the Council's service thirty-seven
years ago none remains, though five are in retirement; and only three of
those who were serving when I became Medical Officer of Health in 1924
are still officers of the Council. Most of their older colleagues have passed