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23
SALVATION ARMY SHELTERS.
Upon a reference from the Vestry the Public Health Committee
considered letters from the Wandsworth and Clapham Union, pointing
out the desirability of bringing the Salvation Army Shelters within the
operation of the Common Lodging House Act, with a view to the
adoption of measures for the prevention and spread of small pox. These
authorities also stated that representations had been made to the Local
Government Board and the London County Council on the subject.
They asked that the Vestry should make a similar representation.
As this was a matter which appealed strongly to the sympathies of
the Committee in the interest of the health of the Parish, for some of the
18 cases of small pox which had been notified were among persons who
had recently slept in these shelters, the Public Health Committee had no
difficulty in recommending the Vestry to make the desired representation.
There can be no question that it is high time that all these places
should be put under strict public control, not with a view of curtailing
their usefulness to the poor, but in order that the persons who use them
should themselves be protected, and also that the public should be safeguarded
against the spread of infectious disease.
I can imagine nothing so likely as the crowding, which Dr. Waldo
the Medical Officer of Health of St. Saviour's, Southwark, has
described, to propagate and spread Typhus Fever. Happily this
fever is almost unknown in London, and it is therefore all the more
necessary that nothing should be left undone to prevent its re-appearance.
It is a fever so fatal in its effect, so easily conveyed by one person to
another, and so immediately spread in crowded buildings, that an outbreak
of it among the denizens of the shelters would speedily result in its being
carried broadcast throughout London, and especially through the slums.
It has been my lot to have had to deal with several outbreaks in the North
of England, and I cannot easily efface from my mind the effect it has
had among the poorer classes, among persons with whom they dealt for
their small groceries, among the nurses who tended those attacked, and
among others whose duties brought them in contact with the disease.
I know no disease so terrible, not even small pox, for against its infection