View report page

54
respect and of the decencies of life. In order, therefore, to avoid the risk
of children coming into contact with obviously undesirable adults, it is
essential that the children who would necessarily be cleansed in the day
time should be provided for at an establishment removed from the
neighbourhood of that at which adults are cleansed. In the draft letter to
various local sanitary authorities which we recently forwarded to the Public
Health Committee, we emphasised this fact; but we regret to find that in
the letter sent to the sanitary authorities the statement that it was essential
that children should be cleansed at an establishment removed from that
for adults was omitted. The letter, as altered, was sent out without our
being consulted, and we only knew of the omission after the letter had
already gone.
The danger of sending children to common cleansing stations arises
from the fact that most of these stations are in lonely situations, or in
places difficult of access, and that there is a likelihood of tramps loitering
about the roads leading to them. There are, moreover, several cleansing
stations where shelters are provided at which persons are temporarily
accommodated whilst their houses are being cleaned. It should also be
borne in mind that there is reasonable excuse for parents refusing to allow
their children to go to these isolated stations alone when as often happens
to parents in poor circumstances they have not time themselves to take
the children. We have in mind one cleansing station, situated in a lonely
road, which provides for a densely-populated district. At this station
during the present year 500 tramps have attended. There is no separate
station provided in this district, nor as far as we are aware, with a single
exception,* in any other district for the adequate cleansing of children.
We desire to take this opportunity of stating, with the full sense of the
Council's responsibility for the safeguarding of the children, that we
cannot view without misgiving the serious risks which little children would
run in attending, especially during the dark days of winter, the cleansing
stations resorted to by tramps and other undesirable persons, nor can we
regard with equanimity the position which would be occupied by the
Council if any harm were to arise to children from such persons in
connection with the children's visits under the Council's orders to the
cleansing stations. For these reasons we desire that the Council should
be informed that in our opinion it is undesirable that school children
should be sent to cleansing stations attended by verminous adults.
ADDITIONAL PLANS FOR THE CLEANSING STATION.
In consequence of the increased number of baskets of clothing requiring
to be stoved at frequent intervals during the day, and the excessive wear and
tear in using the large steam chambers for such small parcels, it became
desirable to consider the installation of a small steam chamber to relieve the
larger chambers. Also, in consequence of the large number of baths taken
and the greater amount of steam and hot water used, it was considered desirable
to substitute for the two fires and the gas geyser a single boiler to produce
* This single exception is the Borough of St. Pancras.