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3
BOROUGH OF RICHMOND
(SURREY).
Report on the Medical Inspection and Treatment of
Elementary School Children for the year ended
December 31st, 1939.
To the Chairman and Members of the Education Committee.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Report on the work of the
School Medical Department during the year 1939. It is the
nineteenth Annual Report as your School Medical Officer.
The Board of Education, in their Form 6 M, have suggested
that owing to the abnormal conditions and because of the urgent
need of economy it will be impossible for School Medical Officers to
present Reports for the year 1939 on as comprehensive a scale as in
previous years. The Board will therefore accept for the year 1939,
School Reports of a comparatively simple nature. I have, therefore,
cut out a good deal of the usual report which after all is merely
repetition.
It should be noted that Richmond is a Neutral area and therefore
there was no wholesale evacuation of school children or reception
of evacuees. A certain amount of private evacuation occurred but
this had very little effect on the District.
In July last the Education Committee decided to provide
trench shelters for the various schools, so that when war actually was
declared on 3rd September, it was not very long before the schools
were open after a slightly extended summer holiday.
All children over the age of 8 years were back at school by
25 th September and the infants went back at various periods up to
6th November. From 25th September therefore all the school medical
services were working as usual with the exception that Tonsil and
Adenoid Operations were held up owing to the emergency service of