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WELbeck 7766 Public Health Department,
Town Hall,
St. Marylebone, W.l.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and. Councillors of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Marylebone.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present to you my Annual Report on the health of the Borough during 1962.
At the request of the Minister of Health the report retains its usual form and gives full details of the
water supply, sewerage and public swimming baths in the Borough.
Throughout the year the public health continued to be satisfactory. The standardized birth
and general death rates remained virtually the same as in 1961 while infant mortality fell from 26.39
to 22.22 per thousand live births; the stillbirth rate of 11.63 per thousand total births was appreciably
lower (19.40 last year) and happily there were no maternal deaths. Furthermore, the incidence of
infectious disease was the lowest on record, only 277 notifications being received. Measles accounted
for 107 of these (compared with 422 in the previous year) and dysentery for 81—of the latter cases 70
occurred in two residential homes emphasising how difficult it is to prevent the spread of this
fortunately mild infection in such closely knit communities. Only two cases of whooping cough and
one of poliomyelitis were notified in 1962 and the long sequence of years free from diphtheria and
smallpox continued.
No case of smallpox has occurred in St. Marylebone for more than thirty years but this record was
gravely threatened in the early part of the year following the arrival just across the border in the
neighbouring borough of St. Pancras, at the very end of 1961, of a Pakistani already ill with the
disease. This was the first of five separate importations of variola major from Karachi leading in all
to the occurrence of 62 cases, with 24 deaths, in England and Wales. Thus the beginning of 1962
found the Department intensely engaged in following up smallpox contacts, making arrangements
for vaccination, and authenticating many thousands of International Certificates as described on
page 26. Mercifully, no secondary cases developed in St. Marylebone. In a world growing smaller
year by year there is less and less room for complacency.
The main causes of death amongst adults continued to be diseases of the cardiovascular and respiratory
systems and various forms of cancer. This toll is unnecessarily heavy—a fact underlined in the
report of the Royal College of Physicians on "Smoking and Health" which was published in March,
1962. The association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer and bronchitis is convincingly
demonstrated in this authoritative survey which also suggests that the habit may contribute to the
development of coronary heart disease as well as aggravating and perpetuating ulcers of the stomach
and duodenum. Here at least is one sphere where the value of abstention is beyond dispute and in
which the exercise of personal responsibility is inescapable. Where there is a will there is a way !
However, much encouragement will be needed to persuade the tobacco lover to give up smoking cigarettes
for it is far from easy to abandon a pleasure of long standing. "Better not to acquire the habit in
the first place" must be the theme where the young are concerned.
There can be no doubt that the self-inflicted wounds of personal pollution through cigarette smoking
are aggravated by the impersonal contamination of the atmosphere emanating from domestic and
industrial chimneys. Hence it is good to report that the smoke control programme for the Borough
proceeds according to plan. The smoke control area covering the Portman Square Ward came into
operation on the 1st of October and by the end of the year the sixth order (affecting the Bryanston
Square Ward) to be made by the Council had received confirmation from the Minister pf Housing and
Local Government. If further justification of smoke control measures were needed it was provided
early in December when thick fog enveloped London for a period of four days. In similarly unfavourable
weather conditions, while the sulphur dioxide concentrations closely resembled those experienced
in the great smog of 1952, the smoke readings were down by over a third thanks to the Clean Air Act
of 1956. Making full allowance for the greater public awareness of the hazards of smog—scarves
and handkerchiefs being more widely used as protective filters and the chesty tending to remain
indoors—it seems highly probable, to say the least, that the reduction in smoke pollution contributed
to the substantially smaller number of deaths directly attributable to the smog (340 in London in
contrast to some 2,000 ten years previously).
Although smoke particles constitute the greatest menace to health, efforts to remove other pollutants
are always welcome. In this respect it was heartening to learn near the end of the year of the proposed
conversion to oil firing of the boilers in use at Lodge Road Power Station, with the concomitant prospect
of relief from grit and dust pollution. It is also pleasing to note, in the information kindly supplied
by the Director of Public Cleansing on page 15, that an extension of the dustless refuse collection
system, so successful in the St. John's Wood area, is contemplated.
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