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for the reception of 5 or 6 patients with a man and wife as caretakers.
It was felt that a nurse could be obtained from London if and
when a patient was admitted. The disinfection of articles was to be
carried out at Hornsey, but as Dr. Roughton pointed out "this method
is necessarily very unsatisfactory, for it entails a great deal of trouble,
inconvenience, and expense, and being purely an act of grace, is liable
to cease at any moment
It should be remembered that at this time the isolation of sick
children from school and the removal of people to an Isolation Hospital
was not the practice. Children were being sent to school whilst
suffering from Scarlet Fever or Diphtheria and one report states that
in 1893 a child known to be one of the first cases of an outbreak of
Scarlet Fever was found to be mixing widely with other children during
the period of desquamation, a condition at that time thought to be
highly infectious.
As these notes are not intended to be other than a brief sketch it is
not desirable to give details of the progress of Public Health Legislation,
but it should be said that Dr. Roughton was in the van of those
clamouring for legislation for the enforcement of controls to lessen
the incidence of infectious diseases. After many years of hammering
at the Council, Dr. Roughton finally succeeded in getting his way and
in 1900 negotiations commenced to provide an Isolation Hospital.
In one report he stated "as some members of the Council have, at
different times, talked vaguely of sending such cases to the Fever
Hospital, I wrote to every Fever Hospital on the north side of London
enquiring if they would admit patients from this district. In every case
I was met with a refusal and was told, in effect, that we must look
after our own. This was just the kind of answer I had anticipated ".
In 1902, 3 cases of Smallpox occurred in East Barnet and 2 cottages
at the sewage farm were converted into a temporary Isolation Hospital.
It was not in fact used, as of the 3 cases, the first died, the second made
his own way delirious to South Mimms Smallpox Hospital, to which
the third case was removed. There was a further case in 1930, since
when no further cases have occurred in the district. Finally, in 1909,
the Isolation Hospital in Mays Lane (now known as St. Stephen's
Hospital) was opened and in that year 22 Scarlet Fever cases and 10
Diphtheria cases were admitted. At first, the Hospital was not very
popular, lacking heating and modern amenities, but before it finally
ceased to function in 1949, it had become a very valuable asset to the
district. It is interesting to note that the Councillors of East Barnet
provided many Chairmen of the Isolation Hospital Committee (a
joint Committee of Barnet Urban, Barnet Rural and East Barnet). In
fact, your present Medical Officer of Health was one of the last to
hold office.
Preventive medicine has, of course, always been the main aim of
Public Health and in closing the section on Infectious Diseases, two
examples of the success of recent years should be quoted.
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