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7
Fever on Board Ship in St. Katharine Dock.
A death from fever having occurred on hoard the Ship "Navigator" on
her passage home from the coast of Africa, information of the same was given
to the Sanitary Officers of this Board so soon as the vessel arrived in St. Katharine
Dock. It was deemed advisable to destroy the clothes belonging to the
seaman, which was done by the Inspector; and notice was given to the Captain
to cleanse and disinfect the forecastle of the ship where the man died. The
order was duly attended to.
Difficulty of keeping the Houses occupied by the Poor in a peoper,
Sanitaey Condition.
However much the landlords may feel disposed to keep their houses
which are let to the poor in a proper sanitary condition, the tenants, owing
to their filthy habits, render it almost impossible for them to do so. This
remark refers more particularly to those houses in which every room is let to
a separate family, and where the yard, privy, and staircase, are used in
common by all the occupants of the house. Thus one tenant will not remove
the filth from any part of the house or yard, so the filth remains, thereby
causing a nuisance to the house. The landlord is required to cleanse and
repair the walls and ceilings when necessary; but as a rule, the tenants seldom
think of cleansing the floors of their rooms or the stairs. Some landlords keep
a man or a woman to look after the privies and the yards for the purpose of
keeping them clean. This work is usually performed early in the morning,
and it often happens that the first person who uses the privy after the same
has been cleansed will deposit filth on the seat, and the next person will do
the same thing, or perhaps will throw the filth in the yard or into the dust-bin:
as a rule, the tenants will not even take the trouble to put the dust into the
bins, but will drop it down by the back door and sometimes in the passage
of the house. The stairs are sometimes found to be so encrusted with dirt
as to require a pickaxe or shovel to remove it. The teaching of cleanly
habits to the poor would form a grand field for missionary enterprize,
Small-Pox.
During this quarter it will be observed, from the returns of sickness as
shown in the books of the Medical Officers of the Union, and from the returns
of mortality as given by the Registrar General, that only one case of smallpox
has been entered, and that only one death has occurred. We may
therefore consider that the epidemic of small-pox has now passed away. This
however is the proper time to most strongly urge upon all the officers who
have been appointed to carry oat the provisions of the Vaccination Act, not to
relax in their exertions to bring all the children born in the District under
the influence of vaccination; for parents are too apt to neglect the duty when
the epidemic has ceased.