View report page

those being built by the Council. Directly or indirectly, many of these
improvements affect the household duties of housewives by making them
easier and more congenial.
One of the matters which is receiving special attention is the provision
of adequate facilities for washing and drying clothes and bed linen.
Laundry work, however, even in a well-designed house, is a back-breaking
job if there are no mechanical aids. There is a strong case for the more
universal use of washing machines, and in this it might be possible for
local authorities to provide washing machines on hire-purchase terms
on a system of priorities based on family needs; or to make more extensive
use of the powers given under the Baths and Wash-Houses Act. It
is important, however, that any wash-houses provided should be well
designed and equipped on imaginative lines.
I have deliberately written the foregoing because I believe that,
generally speaking, housewives above all other sections of the community
do need more leisure time and the matters I have mentioned are those
which people concerned in promoting Public Health do have before
them.
There is, of course, the other problem of providing suitable
recreational facilities for leisure hours, but this, however, is such a wide
subject that I only propose to deal with one small part of it—namely,
Parks and Open Spaces, which do figure a great deal in the everyday
lives of many people, particularly town-dwellers.
Some of the importance which I attach to our Parks and Open Spaces
can be gauged from the following letter which I wrote to a Parks
Superintendent:—
"You have not received a letter from me before, but this is not
because I think that our Parks and Open Spaces are not important
from the standpoint of public health, but because quite frankly, I
have not found the time as I should have done to communicate with
you.
"Now that our leisure is becoming quite as important as our
work, the part which you have to play is similarly increasingly
important, and I do hope that whilst on the one hand our open spaces
will be just as beautiful, if not indeed more beautiful, the grounds
will be so laid out as to give the maximum number of people the
maximum amount of healthy recreation. In other words, I want
Page 16