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later, Dr. Codd was appointed Medical Officer of Health on a
part-time basis. Dr. Codd held this post until 1915 and his
Annual Reports are available as a record of his valuable service
to the district.
Throughout all these years, 1848 to 1907, the public health
actions of the Local Authority were concerned mainly with
environment, the abatement of nuisances and the prevention of
nuisances, but took no action in the personal health services,
except in the control of infectious diseases.
With the coming into force of the Education Act of 1907,
Bromley was empowered to form a School Medical Inspection
Service in 1909 and later established, through the excellent help
of the Voluntary Children's Care Committee, a Minor Ailment
Treatment Service.
Following the Notification of Births Act of 1907, there was
formed the Bromley Health Society, a voluntary body of farsighted
women, advised by Dr. Codd, who undertook through
welfare centres and day nurseries the care and after-care of
necessitous mothers and children under five years. It was not
until the passing of the Maternity and Child Welfare Act of
1918 that the Local Authority undertook the responsibility for
their work.
The result of these extensions of medical services called for
the appointment of the first full-time Medical Officer of Health
—Dr. Stewart Stalker, in 1921—but, shortly after his appointment,
he had to relinquish the post owing to illness.
In 1925, the school medical service and the Maternity and
Child Welfare and environmental services were amalgamated as
one service both at Departmental and Committee member level
and continued as such until July 1948, when, having come full
circle in the hundred years, the services which were locally
controlled and operated were passed over to "centralisation
under the Kent County Council at Maidstone. To-day the Town
Council have the power to spend only one quarter of the money
raised by local rates, and, except for control of Infectious
Diseases and the School Health Service, have no part to play in
the personal health services.
In 1850, Bromley was an area of communities centred round
each of the parish churches, with a population (including Hayes
and Keston) of 5,323 persons living in 1,092 houses, with an
environment inadequately sewered, no safe water supply,
inadequately lighted and of "darkness visible," a death rate of