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APPENDIX No. 1.
ANNUAL REPORT
of The
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
From 1st January, 1878, to December 31st 1878.
To THE VESTRY of the PARISH of St. MARY, ROTHERHITHE, Surry.
Gentlemen,
The twenty-three years which have lapsed since the various Local
Governing bodies of the Metropolis were first authorized to appoint "Medical
practitioners of skill and experience to act as their advisers in matters of Public
Health, have, in this Parish particularly, been marked by so many improvements in
municipal regulations and minute topography, that a comparison of the condition of
Rotherhithe then and now. may not, in this my first annual Report, be without interest.
I will remind you that in 1856, Rotherhithe was supposed to be one of
the most insalubrious suburban districts*, being almost entirely unsewered, marshy,
with a scanty water supply, and that so contaminated, as to be usually
refused even by horses from other parts of town, who had to bait while
* And is to this day so deseribed in many Medical text-books.