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Borough Electrical Engineer, and his staff for arranging the electric
kitchen and for the very considerable help in many directions given
by the Electricity Department; to Mr. P. Holt, the Borough
Engineer and Surveyor; Mr. W. H. Parker, the Borough Librarian;
Mr. D. T. Lucke, the Public Analyst, who kindly provided an
exhibit and himself explained apparatus to the public; the Dental
Board of the United Kingdom; the Health and Cleanliness Council;
the Hackney District Nursing Association, and the National Association
for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. The assistance given
by these organisations in providing exhibits, loaning films and
supplying booklets and pamphlets was extremely valuable.
Extract from "The Nursing Times," October 2nd, 1937.
Parables at Hackney.
At approximately 7.15 p.m. on September 27th the Mayor of
Hackney pronounced his official benediction on an exhibition which
must arouse the interest, curiosity and, it is hoped, the co-operation
of the citizens of the borough of Hackney.
Imagine a large hall, gay, but with warning posters everywhere,
health literature thrust into your hands, models of
disinfestation apparatus, a cinema, a baby clinic, housing parables,
and every enquiry answered, and then you begin to have some idea
of the public health exhibition organised by Dr. Dart, medical officer
of health, at the Hackney Town Hall.
First, since bad housing conditions are the roots of most of our
health problems, the housing exhibits must be visited. These consist
of excellent photographs and models to scale of slums and the new
housing schemes. Thus a model of Lyme Grove, E.9, shows the
density of population, the narrow alleys between the houses, and the
tumbledown dwellings themselves, and side by side you find an
equally interesting model of a slum clearance scheme in Hackney,
where you have a flat, a place for your pram, a recreation hall, and
a sanctuary. (The sanctuary is where the dead are laid before
burial.) And to make the comparison more explicit you can walk
from the old to the new—through an exact reconstruction of a slum
house to one of the Council's new flats. Beside the old, crowded
room, its paper peeling off the walls, the new room seemed to glitter
in its brave, light cleanness.
But, before a tenant makes his triumphant entry into this
"promised land," there is a ritual which must be observed. This
is shown most dramatically in a film, " Slum Clearance and
Re-Housing in the Borough." Here is enacted the flitting of, shall
we say, Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Hackney, and Albert, Jeanie and
baby George. The old house is shown, alive with bugs, and little
in the way of sanitation, so that it is little wonder that Mrs. Smith