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13
The wife of a man residing in West Kent Park had been
on a visit to a relative at Poplar suffering from cholera, and
whilst there had a sharp attack of diarrhœa. Two days after
her return home to a house notoriously filthy, her infant was
attacked with cholera, and died in a few hours. The day
after the child's attack, the father (a man of intemperate
habits) was attacked with cholera and died.
A woman who had visited her sister at Plumstead (who
died of cholera), was attacked the day after her return home
with choleraic diarrhoea, from which she however recovered.
She had taken the precaution before she left Plumstead of
having some of her own clothes destroyed, to prevent her
being the carrier of infection.
Enquiries having been made as to the water supply of the
district by the Registrar General, I wrote the following
reply:—
"August 26th, 1866.
"Blockheath and the Village of Lewisham are supplied by
tho Kent Water Works Company, who did obtain their
supply from the Ravensbourne, but since the wholesale contamination
of that stream by sewage, have given up that
source of supply, and, I am positively assured, solely use water
from artesian wells, which appear to me to give an abundant
supply.
"Sydenham and Penge are supplied with water by the
Lambeth Company.
"The water as supplied seems a very fair sample, but in
many houses, even of the better class, little attention is paid
to the cleansing of cisterns, and amongst the poor it would be
an exceptional matter to find a clean cistern; again some of
the waste pipes from some of the cisterns have been found
to communicate directly with the sewer, and sometimes without
traps.
"Lewisham Village is also supplied from pump wells, but
the Village is now well drained, and I think that these wells
are free from contamination, so far as 1 have been able to
ascertain.
"Diarrhœa is prevalent, but not generally of a severe cha-