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SANITARY WORK FOR THE YEAR.
The General Sanitary Work carried out by me, as your Medical Officer of
Health, comprised, as a regular routine, the performance of the following duties, in
compliance with your printed instructions.
1.—To inspect and report periodically to the Vestry upon the Sanitary condition
of the Parish; to ascertain the existance of disease therein, and to report to the Vestry
as to the rise, progress and decline thereof; to give them notice of the appearance of
any epidemic or contagious disease, and to suggest means to stop the spreading of the
same.
2.— To point out the existence of any nuisance or other local causes which are
likelv to originate and maintain such diseases, and injuriously affect the health of
the inhabitants.
3.—To point out the most efficacious mode for the ventilation of churches,
chapels, schools, lodging houses, and other public edifices within the parish.
4.—To exercise surveillance over all places where cattle are slaughtered; and
cowhouses, and to see that the instructions given are properly and efficiently carried
out in those places.
5. To give the necessary surveillance to the state of the dwellings of the poor,
their ventilltion cleanliness, and to prevent the evil of overcrowding in those dwellings,
in all cases where his attention is called thereto by the Inspector of Nuisances.
—To use his best endeavours to get water laid on to every house.
7.—To attend the monthly Meetings of the Vestry or any other meetings at which
his attendance may be required; also to attend daily at the Vestry office at 10 30 a.m.
to receive reports of the Inspector of Nuisances and give directions thereon; to go out
with the General Purposes and Sanitary Committees when required to do so.
8.— To attend all such nuisance summonses before the magistrate, as may be
required, to give evidence thereon.
9.—Generally to perform all other duties required of him by the Vestrv, and the
several acts of Parliament relating to Sanitary matters affecting the Metropolis.
Present at eighteen monthly and adjourned Vestrv Meetings, I there read 12
Reports, all of which you received and adopted. Avoiding repetition of the Sanitary
statistics and topography already given, they may thus be summarised:—
In January, chiefly owing to the intense cold, and protracted fogs, (fruitful sources
of destruction to persons at the extremes of life) we occupied merely the 5th position in
health scale of the twenty large English towns; indeed, during the first week of the
new year, so high an annual death rate for that time (12 per 1000 as against 48 in the
whole Metropolis), has never, I believe, been registered here before. The mortality