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19
Last year I pointed out that I looked forward to the time when the nutrition
of people who were unemployed and their dependants would be completely
co-ordinated, when the amount of relief would be adequate and be dispensed by one
authority only and when it would be only necessary for your special services to call
the attention of that authority to any special circumstances for a sufficient financial
adjustment to be made.
Food supplies may now enter our houses from several different channels—
from different authorities who have little or no opportunity of co-ordinating their
efforts. If this leads to overlapping it is of course bad, but if it leads to a deficiency
in the service it must of course be even worse.
(c) Housing.—In previous years I have called attention to the considerable
programmes which you have designed and carried out to overcome your housing
problems, and I know that you are at the present time addressing yourselves to
the possibility of dealing with overcrowding under the powers you have under the
Housing Act, 1935. I have, however, to point out that only a limited number of
people can live in Barking, and I do sincerely hope and trust that in re-housing people
you will see that so far as is practicable twelve houses to the acre will be looked
upon as standard.
Barking is largely a dormitory and in a dormitory town there is not the
excuse for overcrowding that obtains in some places where local industry requires
a large number of the industrial population to be housed in a relatively small area.
(d) Travelling Facilities.—Year after year I criticize adversely the conditions
under which your dormitory population travel to and from work. The overcrowded
condition of the trains and the long queues wait ing in the rain for buses—these would
be bad enough for a holiday population, but for people, tired and weary, at the end
of a day's work, they represent a condition of affairs which can only be detrimental
to the health of the public.
Dr. C. F. Fenton, who preceded me as medical officer of health, tells of having
found and diagnosed a case of smallpox in a train travelling to Barking. How
many people there must be who, if not suffering with smallpox, are suffering with
other conditions, particularly catarrhal conditions of the nose and throat, and who
stand in overcrowded trains, cheek by jowl with other people !