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TO THE MAYOR, ALDERMEN AND COUNCILLORS OF THE BOROUGH OF LEYTON
Mr Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my report, as requested by the Ministry of Health, on
the factors affecting the health of the people of the borough of Leyton during 1964,
its last full year, and on the health of the population as individuals, including
reference to the work of the School Health Service
When this report is published Leyton Borough will be a memory - a memory of 39
eventful years in the field of health services
The first Annual Report for the year 1926 opens with the words of Dr. Francis
Taylor, Medical Officer of Health of the time; "I am pleased to report that the health
of the Borough has been satisfactory" and then goes on to report 104 deaths from
tuberculosis, 35 from measles and enteritis and seven women dying in childbirth. He
was very pleased that only 1,204 school children were verminous, about a third of the
figure five years before. In that year Leyton won the Daily News first prize of £20
for the greatest reduction in the death rate of babies, for districts of over 100,000
population. That improved death rate was over three times what it is now.
These figures have dramatically improved since then but there is another side to
the picture. The death rate for lung cancer is now eight times as great (well over
half the cases before normal retirement age) as in that year and deaths from Leukaemia
doubled. The percentage of illegitimate births, with all the associated stress and
distress, is over two-and-a-half times as high as it was then and we have now become
aware that illness of the mind is as real and as widespread as any illness of the body
and is on the increase. Am I to report that the health of the borough has been satisfactory?
No one will deny that we must attack present ills forcefully but we can
fairly gain encouragement from a review of past achievement.
Past achievement is something in which Leyton can take pride. More than once
Leyton has led the field and permissive powers as well as statutory duties have been
exploited to the full.
After its success in winning the "Daily News" prize, Leyton in 1931 started a
Home Help scheme, preceding much of the country by fifteen or more years. In 1932
expectant mothers were given meals in the clinics - a health measure of vital importance
in the depression. Leyton was one of the early authorities to combine the post of
Health Visitor with that of School Nurse.
Almost as soon as the audiometer for testing the hearing of school children was
invented Leyton purchased one (1934) far ahead of most authorities. The foot clinic
in 1936 was also one of the first by a local authority anywhere in the country.
The child development sessions - now copied widely. - were a Leyton innovation in
1961, and the arrangement where the psychiatrist at the Child Guidance Clinic holds
this appointment jointly with a hospital post, with a children's ward at Whipps Cross,
has unique features which I am confident will one day be seen as another Leyton pioneer
"first" .
And so we come to the last year of Leyton's existence which, like the first, is
marked by achievement - The Alice Burrell Centre - The first Local Authority purposebuilt
luncheon club for old people anywhere in the country. This Centre has already
become quite a show piece attracting many visitors from elsewhere.
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