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Crayford Urban District Council
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for
the year 1955.
The widening of our conception of health in recent years
to include mental, as well as physical aspects imposes special
difficulties on anyone who attempts an objective assessment
of the health of a community.
The Medical Officer of Health of the Urban District
Council of Crayford in the year 1921, on the other hand,
could have suffered from no such inhibitions faced, as he
was, with a heavy load of infectious disease, an infant
mortality rate of 88.8 per thousand live births, and a wide
variety of environmental problems which survive only as a
faint echo in the present day health administration of the
Urban District. It should be borne in mind that the population
of the district at that time was barely 12,000 but, even
so, there were 111 cases of diphtheria with 12 deaths, and
93 cases of Scarlet Fever with one death.
A comparison with the vital statistics for 1955 will,
therefore, show the extent of the progress which has taken
place in the intervening 35 years as a result of improvements
in environmental hygiene, in standards of living generally,
in the techniques of health education, and through the introduction
of a wide range of personal health services. Yet in
spite of all this, it would be to take a superficial view to say
that the present day health of the community can be regarded
as entirely satisfactory. Considerable emphasis is,
nowadays, being placed on mental health and there is a
widespread feeling that neurosis and anxiety states are on
the increase. It is, certainly, true that a very high proportion
of hospital beds in the country as a whole is devoted to the
treatment of mental disease. There are no statistics on
which to base a realistic assessment of the mental health of
our community and general impressions, even when they are
the result of careful enquiry, may not be altogether reliable.
The mental health of schoolchildren is nowadays receiving
greater attention than it did a decade ago but this may be
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