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9
INTRODUCTION
to the
ANNUAL REPORT of the MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
Health Department,
Town Hall,
Tottenham.
April, 1925.
To the Chairman and other Members of
the Tottenham Urban District Council.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Report upon the Health and Sanitary Conditions of Tottenham
for the year 1924 does not differ materially from that for the previous
year. Every fifth year, the Ministry of Health will require a lengthy
and detailed account of the district and of the conditions prevailing
therein, insofar as they relate to the health of the people. The 1924
Report is one of the "leaner" kind. It consists, for the most part, of
statistical tables which, although they do not provide interesting reading,
supply the material out of which may be gauged the improvement, or
otherwise, in health and environment of the community as a whole.
The one great outstanding environmental defect in the district is
the lack of housing accommodation for the population of Tottenham.
Quite a number of houses are ripe for demolition, but a certain amount
of restraint has to be exercised in the matter of condemnation, lest the
already badly overcrowded condition of much of the poorer quality of
property is made worse. The unsatisfactory housing of Tottenham people
has not been improved by the building of houses and tenements by the
London County Council in the Lordship Lane and White Hart Lane
district. These houses and tenements have been let to families displaced
from Hoxton, Shoreditch and other areas where demolition schemes are
in operation in London.
How far the adverse housing conditions are responsible for the increase
in the Death Rate of 1924 over that of 1923 it would be hazardous to
say. But that there may have been a very close relation would not be
a very far-fetched theory. Apart from the increase by 53 of that nondescript
group called "Other Defined Diseases," the main incidence