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consumed as rapidly as it becomes collected. This arrangement
is another stage in the scheme of daily collection and destruction of
house garbage. The closing scene will be arrived at when every
house, or block of houses, shall have its pail or other receptacle
called for daily by the scavengers.
The Autumn of 1892 stands out conspicuously from recent
years, by the presence upon the Continent of a serious epidemic of
true Asiatic Cholera.
The daily press conveyed most minutely to its readers hideously
graphic accounts of the progress of the disease. I do not propose
to reproduce any of the news so reported, but will rest content
with placing on record the precautions which were adopted by
your Board, and by your Officers, to meet any visitation which
might take place. For that purpose I propose to introduce a
report which I prepared, in reply to a communication from the
Local Government Board, requesting information concerning our
preparedness in the event of an epidemic appearing in our
District:—
November 7th, 1892.
To the Sanitary Committee,
Gentlemen,
The communication which has just been received from the Local
Government Board, referring to that Board's Memorandum of the 25th Angust
last, on the subject of Cholera, contains the request to be furnished with any
Report by myself upon the Sanitary condition of the Whitechapel District, which
I may have presented to your Board.
As all Reports upon the subject were orally communicated either by myself
directly, or in combination with statements made by your Clerk, it may be
advisable that I should now briefly recapitulate the chief details which will inform
the Local Government Board as to the condition of the Whitechapel District.
In 1884 I reported to the Committee of Works as follows:—"Although in
"1866. about 35 per cent. of our Residents suffered from Cholera, Choleraic
"Diarrhoea, or Diarrhoea; and 566 lives (or over 7 per 1000 of the population)
"were sacrificed to this terrible epidemic, I feel justified in asserting that a
"repetition of such a history cannot occur in Whitechapel. Not only have many
"of the worst houses been removed, but the entire District is in every way in a
"far better Sanitary condition now. The water supply is also sufficient and
" good."
To a still greater extent these remarks are applicable to our District at the
present time. More Model Dwellings occupy the site of former insanitary houses,
and although certain parts of the Distridt—as much on account of the habits of
immigrant foreigners, as from the condition of the houses—require to be improved,
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