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Introduction.
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
County Borough of West Ham.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I herewith present my Annual Report for the year 1928. The
earlv part of the year brought much distress to many inhabitants owing
to the disastrous flooding of the Thames : towards the end of the year
Smallpox broke out in the Borough for the first time since 1921. The
manner in which the distress caused by the flood was dealt with is set
out in an Appendix to this Report. As regards the Smallpox outbreak,
at the time of writing this disease is still prevalent and causing considerable
anxiety, though fortunately, so far, the outbreak has been of a
particularly mild type and has not involved any fatal results. A detailed
report will be submitted later.
Permission to extend the Public Baths at Plaistow has been obtained
from the Ministry of Health and this much needed addition will
be added as soon as practicable.
During the year a Chief Sanitary Inspector was appointed mainly
in order to still further correlate the activities of the individual district
inspectors and to pay special attention to certain problems of housing.
The scheme for the establishment of a colony for mental defectives
mentioned in my previous Reports has not yet received the final approval
of the Board of Control.
Reference to page 8 will show that the vital statistics prove very
satisfactory and were it not for the gross over-crowding still prevalent
the figures should be even more satisfactory.
The continued excessive prevalence of infectious diseases has rendered
it necessary to formulate a scheme for additional hospital accommodation
for such cases and a proposal is now before the Ministry of
Health for consideration, involving an additional block containing 50
beds, adjoining the site of the Convalescent Home for infectious diseases
at Harold Wood.
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