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the experiment. The recent improvements in respect to drainage, water
supply, &c., in the vicinity of the Infant and National Schools (in which locality
is included Cocks' Buildings and neighbourhood), may be adduced in
proof of the advantages of such works of general benefit; for here severe
diseases are now much less frequent and infinitely less fatal than they were
when cesspools reigned supreme, and good water was in consequence an
unobtainable luxury. If then, by good drainage, &c., success has attended
the efforts made to improve the health and lessen the rate of mortality of
an hitherto notoriously unhealthy locality, (where cholera and other severe
epidemics had always found the greatest number of victims,) and to blot out
one more plague-spot from the catalogue of places, whence were formerly
derived the majority of our parochially supported widows and orphans, it
is difficult to arrive at a conclusion other than that the entire sub-district
must have been benefited by the improvements indicated. Further, if it can
be shown that by the proposed extension of sewerage the drainage of what
may be termed the suburban portions of the parish, such as Roehampton
and the Heath, will, with greater certainty and facility, be hereafter secured,
surely there can be but few—however much disposed some may be to shut
their eyes to the necessity for such works on account of their cost—who will
seriously deny the general benefits that must ultimately accrue from them.
It should be recollected that although good sewerage is somewhat costly
in its first formation, the constant expenses attendant upon widowhood and
orphanage, and loss of labour through sickness, is infinitely more so. Upon
the basis upon which life insurances are now calculated, it is a settled point
with all experienced actuaries that the mean money-value of a healthy and
effective labourer is as much as £226! Is it not, then, something to be
able to save even one life per year amongst the labouring classes by measures
of precaution such as arc now about to be taken in this sub-district ? Should
but ten valuable lives be saved by such means in as many years, it is clear
that the sum borrowed, and to be expended in the construction of the projected
sewerage, will be more than returned to the commnnity, both principal
and interest, in the equivalent of productive labour.
Taking a retrospect of the improvements effected in this and the other
parishes comprised in the Wandsworth District, within the last few years, we
cannot fail to observe how gradually but surely have all the most important
benefits we enjoy been secured to us. It is pleasing to review, as my colleagues
and myself have attempted to do in this report, the progress we are
making in sanitation—it must be even more so for such of the inhabitants
who really desire the sanitary welfare of their several sub-districts, to aid and
assist in this progress; but it will amount to an offence, it might almost be
said, a crime, against the good government of communities, to be apathetic
when so much yet remains to be accomplished, or to offer opposition when
there is so much need of resolute and combined exertion in support of the
greatest, and unquestionably the most important, movement of the age.
R. HARLAND WHITEMAN,
Medical Officer of Health for Putney, and Chairman of the Astociated
Health Officer of the Wandsworth District.