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These floodings are due to the inability of the existing sewers
to carry away storm water, but it is stated that the London County
Council are contemplating improvements to their sewerage system
which will prevent future floodings.
The entire cost of the Public Health service in the Borough,
including all staff, and the maintenance of the Tuberculosis Dispensaries,
the Welfare Centres, Disinfecting Station, Isolation Shelters
and Mortuary, and all forms of assistance under the Tuberculosis
and Maternity and Child Welfare schemes is estimated during the
coming financial year to amount to a rate of 3.87d. This includes
the expenditure required by the expansion of the Maternity and Child
Welfare service.
Administration of the health services is made more difficult by
the fact that in Hackney, with its total population of 228,500, there is
also, quoting from the last Census return, a population of 28,457
persons, equal in number to many Urban Districts, living in two
room dwellings, and 9,627 living in one room dwellings. In spite of
the difficulties that the housing conditions obviously make, it is
indeed a matter of great satisfaction that the health of the Borough
should, on the whole, remain so good. It is interesting to notice
that it is stated in the Annual Report of the Metropolitan Hospital,
that both in-patients and out-patients and attendances at the Hospital
were considerably fewer in number than in 1925, and that " the
decrease in the figures should be considered satisfactory, for it was
attributed to the health of the working classes generally." This
bears out the facts indicated by the Registrar General's Returns as
to the death rate and infantile mortality in the Borough.
In conclusion, I have to thank the Public Health and Child
Welfare Committees for their support and kind consideration, ar.d
I also express my appreciation of the manner In which my staff have
performed their duties.
I am,
Yours obediently,
G. H. DART,
Medical Officer of Health.