View report page

10
building is used for washing the clothes of the sick children,
and hot and cold water is supplied from the same building to
each of the wards.
The drainage of the baths and lavatories is severed from
the main sewer by allowing the pipe to hang over a trapped
drain outside, so that there can be no possibility for sewer
gas to enter the building through these openings.
Previous to the erection of the infirmary children were not
admitted to the schools under the reputed age of four years,
and sick children were not received from tho unions under
any circumstances ; but, since the building has been opened
for the reception of patients, children are admitted at the
reputed age of two years, and sick children are received from
the unions as well as healthy ones.
Notwithstanding this, the mortality, which bears no comparison
with that of children at their own homes, has not, for
the last ten years, exceeded one-half per cent. per annum;
and, during the year 1868 (notwithstanding several outbreaks
of epidemic disease), no death has occurred amongst a population
of over 900 children.
Water Supply.
The following quotations from the Report of the RegistrarGeneral
on the Analysis of Water supplied by the Metropolitan
Water Companies during the year 1868, has an
important bearing upon the supply of this district.
The past year (1868) was distinguished by very heavy
floods in the Thames basin in the winter, followed by excessive
droughts in the summer; it was, therefore, to be
expected that the quality of the water would vary between
limits equally wide. In January the Thames overflowed its
banks above the point at which the metropolitan water supply
was drawn, and, washing the surface of cultivated fields,
mingling with stagnant ditches and ponds, and receiving the
contents of the suddenly-flushed sewers of Oxford, Reading,
Windsor, &c., became contaminated to an intolerable degree.