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90
The Temporary Offices of the Public Health
Department.
As indicated on the first page, the business of the
Public Health Department will now be carried on at No. 3,
Upper Gloucester Place. For the first time during the
writer's long period of office, there is suitable accommodation
for the increasing mass of papers, reports, correspondence,
and records. Although the offices are confessedly
temporary, no one with any knowledge of public business
can for a moment doubt but that it will be many years
before municipal offices will be built and ready for occupa"
tion. The construction of a new Town Hall is eminently a
matter of contention; there will be honest differences of
opinion as to the best possible site, as to the kind of
building, and as to the cost of both; there can, however,
hardly be any room for dispute that such offices are urgently
needed. It was only when the position of affairs became
intolerable that the Council consented to separate for a time
the Public Health Department from the old Town Hall, and
thus give a transient relief and some little better accommodation
to the other departments.
The Health of the District during July.
Small-pox has for the time definitely died out. The
unusually moderate temperatures have had the direct effect
of reducing the infantile diarrhoea, that usually causes a
good many deaths in hot July months, to insignificant limits.
On the other hand, one district of the Borough has suffered
from scarlatina and throat affections to a far greater extent
than usual. The whole death-rate is, however, more than
two per thousand lower than the average.