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12
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
and Boards should be enlisted. The attention of the Sanitary Committee
has lately been directed to the remnant of sewage left flowing
into the Thames at Hammersmith. The houses between the intercepting
sewer and the river still drain for the most part thereto;
many difficulties attend the diversion of this sewage to its present
legitimate channel, and it is a question whether, as has been suggested,
some supplementary sewer must not be constructed along the
northern shore of the Thames by the lower Mall. This subject is
now anxiously engaging the attention of the Sanitary Committee of
Hammersmith. Though the great bulk of the sewage has been
diverted from the Creek, it still remains an objectionable mud pool,
and I think its bottom should be concreted by the Metropolitan Board
and be occasionally flushed. With the exception of the sewer from
Waterloo-street, and one or two minor drains, the outlets of which
are not yet removed from its banks, no drainage now goes into it.
It is this spot to which I have so often referred as a most eligible one
for baths and washhouses; and now the question of providing them
for Hammersmith has been publicly mooted in our local journals, it
may not be unfitting to refer to them in this report. At the Creek
nature has done much to save the labour of forming most admirable
swimming baths, ample room on either side is available for any
necessary purpose, and the site may or ought to be procurable from
the Metropolitan Board or Thames Conservancy at moderate cost;
indeed, the upper part of the creek alone, now quite unused, would be
nearly ample for the baths and buildings; but the frontage would be
admirably adapted for another crying want of Hammersmith—a Town
Hall. It may not be within the province of your Board to take the
responsibility of these improvements, but your countenance and support
would be of much importance in their accomplishment.
No special features have marked the year 1867 in the Fulham
District. The Registrar-General, however, in his annual summary,
says:—''If the rising and falling rate of mortality be taken as the
criterion of health, the year 1867 was the healthiest that London has
enjoyed since 1860." The annual rate of mortality for London was
2.298, "when the metropolis as a whole is compared with the principal
northern towns, its three millions have reason to be satisfied
with the position it holds in the mortality tables."
The western division, the Registrar-General says," was in the
four years, 1863—6, the healthiest of all the five divisions, but last
year its death rate was in excess, though only in the slightest degree
of that which prevailed in the south districts. In the west the rate
was 2.202; in the south 2.198." So in the Fulham District the
number of deaths appears somewhat in excess, according to the usual
mode of estimating increase of population, though I believe this