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''and medicine, and ordinary or special extra relief. Every reasonable facility is
"afforded for their obtaining promptly what they may stand in actual need
"of; and yet, as an illustration of how trilling an inconvenience will often
"deter persons applying for relief, instances are found in which, rather than
"walk from the more remote parts of the Union (in no case more than
"a mile) to the Workhouse Dispensary and there mingle with pauper appli"cants,
the parties will attend the Medical Officer at his private surgery and
"there actually pay for their medicines and attendance. The persons to
"whom I refer were previously paupers, but, under the former regime, were
"not required to attend other than at the Medical Officer's private surgery
"and from thence at a Dispensary (now abolished) within a very short
"distance."
This Memorandum appears not only to confirm the opinion that the more
efficient is the system of medical poor relief, the less will be the number of
paupers; but it also shows the intimate connexion between diminished
pauperism and improved sanitary arrangements.
Sanitary Improvements.
The Metropolis Local Management Act having now been sixteen years in
operation, I have deemed it advisable to lay before you, in as brief a manner
as I am able to do, an account of some of the most important of the sanitary
improvements which have been carried out in this District; and as, perhaps,
the extension of the sewerage may claim the first consideration, I may state,
on the authority of the late Surveyor, Mr. Pricker, as is set forth and published
in my Annual Report for December, 1867, in a Table furnished to me
by that gentleman, that 20,559 feet, or nearly four miles, of new sewers
have been laid down since 1857. Although sewers existed in most of the
principal streets in Whitechapel Parish at the commencement of the operations
of the Board, it was found, upon a house-to-house inspection, that the
larger number of the houses were not drained into the sewers, but into cesspools
in the basements. In those parts of the District in which there were
no sewers the drainage into cesspools was unavoidable : and such was the
indifference of owners of property to the importance of drainage that, on
making an inspection of the houses in Great Prescot Street, it was found
that 22 of them, or about 21 per cent., were drained into cesspools.
Whenever it was found on inspection that a cesspool existed for receiving
the filth of an inhabited house, and that there was a public sewer within 100
feet, an order was given by the Inspector to the owner requiring him to
provide a trap and pan to the closet, to abolish the cesspool, and to make a
drain from the premises direct into the sewer.
On referring to my Report for the Quarter ending March, 1862, I find it
recorded that 3450 cesspools had been filled up since the formation of your
Board. Several cesspools have been discovered and filled up since 1862, but
some of those which were recorded as having been abolished, have been
found, upon subsequent inspection, not to have been so; the owners, from a