London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St Pancras 1890

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, Metropolitan Borough]

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26
of disinfecting the clothing of members of the infected family whilst they are
cleansing their persons by douches. The class who would find it necessary to use the
shelter would be the very class whose persons and clothing must become saturated
with infection from the close contact into which they are driven by the limited
space of one or at the most of two rooms.
To send back to rooms that have been disinfected persons saturated with
infection without any attempt of personal cleansing is running an unnecessary risk
and undoing the work of disinfection. But to fail to supply to those who being
homeless desire to practice personal cleanliness and rid themselves of all trace of
infection would in addition cast a serious responsibility upon the local authority.
The erection of a few douches is not a very costly matter, and their conjunction
with the Shelter would relieve your Yestry of any responsibility for want of
provision for personal cleanliness and the prevention of re-infection.
Your Vestry Hall is a most undesirable placs for the Shelter of persons
wearing infected clothing, and attempts to procure the use of existing buildings
for the purpose having failed, the erection of a temporary structure on a piece of
vacant ground within reasonable distance of the Vestry Hall is the course that
remains available.
SANITATION.
STAFF.
At the commencement of the year 1889 the request of the London County
Council to be furnished with details of all the insanitary areas in St. Pancras was
under consideration. In the Monthly Report of your Medical Officer of Health,
for April of that year, it was pointed out that this would entail a large amount of
labour, and that the then staff was more than fully employed, St. Pancras
possessing considerably less than half the number of Sanitary Inspectors in proportion
to the six surrounding parishes. Subsequently a Conjoint Report less
detailed than originally contemplated was furnished by your Chief Surveyor and
Medical Officer. With the advent of the Infectious Diseases (Notification) Act in
November, 1889, the great strain falling upon the work of the. Sanitary Department
was again reported to your Sanitary Committee and the impossibility of
keeping pace with the varied and growing number of calls upon the time of the
officers explained.
In December your Sanitary Committee finding that house to house inspections
where rapidly falling off, recommended your Vestry to increase the number of
Sanitary Inspectors. Meanwhile, difficulties having arisen in reference to the
Conjoint Report upon Insanitary Areas your Vestry, on January loth, 1890,
appointed a Special Committee of Inquiry into the Sanitary Department. Your
Special Committee considered the organisation and control of the clerical and legal
work, the supervision of the collection and removal of domestic and other refuse,
the regulation and supervision of drainage work, and the staff necessary.

The number of complaints, infectious cases, articles disinfected, and houses inspected from house to house, during the last five years were submitted to your Special Committee as follows :—

18861887188818891890
Complaints5926677369021248
Infectious Cases Notified3536346816091623
Articles Disinfected. .2260274834887447
Houses Inspected House to..26601674693388