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PUBLIC HEALTH IN TOTTENHAM.
1850 - 1872.
A hundred years ago Tottenham was in the forefront
of public health, as it has been for as long as any of
its present inhabitants can remember. It is natural
to assume that the two circumstances are connected and
that the local government history of the Borough is
rather prosaic, with progressiveness and efficiency as
constant features of the local administration.
The true story is very different and has a much
more epic quality. There was a time near the end of
the first quarter of its sanitary history when the town
was mocked and shunned for the rottenness of its public
management. Within a decade it made a brilliant recovery
and it redounds to the credit of the inhabitants
that by their own efforts they so quickly regained for
their town its former good name.
The present study of Tottenham covers the period
of its rise and fall. It records, to borrow Mr. Arthur
Bryants' felicitous phrase, Tottenham's "Years of Endurance".
The students of the History Study Group of
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine hope
on some future occasion to record in similar fashion
the period 1873 to 1900, Tottenham's "Years of Victory".