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GENERAL PUBLIC HEALTH
A CENTURY OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN BARKING.
The year 1953 saw the completion of 100 years of public health
in Barking. Some attention was paid to matters of health prior to
1853 of course, there being record, for example, of the attention of the
Vestry being called to "an irregular practice of occupiers of houses
opening to the Back Lane throwing out offal and slops from
iheir doors on to the pathway." Two years later the Vicar, Parish
Officers and certain other gentlemen were constituted a Committee
"for inspecting the state of the town as regards the drains, accumulations
of offal, etc., and that they take proper steps for the removal
of the same."
Infectious diseases too had received attention, for in 1832 a special
Board of Health was set up to deal with an outbreak of cholera, whilst
is far back as the middle of the twelfth century there is record of an
hospital for lepers maintained by Barking Abbey. The Abbess of that
time knew a thing or two as the hospital was apparently sited in the
parish of Ilford !
The first Public Health Act—the so called Health of Towns Act—
had been passed in 1848, and the Central Board of Health energetically
let about the creation of local boards of health in districts with death
rates above the average. It would appear from Minutes of vestry
meetings that your predecessors were not as progressive as yourselves
in matters affecting public health, for on the 29th September, 1853, they
solved "that is, in the opinion of the vestry, inexpedient that the
Health of Towns Act should be introduced into this town." On 17th
November, 1853, it was decided to set up a committee to meet an
inspector appointed by the general board of health to conduct an enquiry,
and "to oppose as far as may be deemed expedient the introduction
of the Health of Towns Act into the Town of Barking."
Despite this opposition a Local Board of Health was set up and
its first meeting on 28th November, 1853, under the Chairmanship of a
Dr. John Manley is commemorated by a plaque in the present Council
chamber. This Local Board of Health was shortlived, for two years
later the Nuisan Removals Act transferred the duties to the vestry.
The first Medical Officer of Health does not appear to have been
appointed until after the Town Ward had been constituted a local
government district in 1882, this event also being recorded by a plaque
in the Council Chamber which reads as follows:—
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