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12
The Medical Officer of Health attends daily at the Vestry to inspect
any promises, or to advise the Inspectors; and being Physician
to a large Public Charity, which post he has hold for nearly 30 years,
including the whole of the parish, where the patients are visited at
home, he has numerous opportunities of viewing apartments and
premises which might otherwise escape notice.
During the period in question, many of the poorer houses have been
pulled down, and some bettor houses and factories built. But on the
whole, it is probable that the poorer houses have been considerably diminished
in number: the poorer class often now occupying one or two rooms
as a tenement in the remaining better houses, whoso former occupants
live out of town. Hence on the whole, the inhabitants are more
crowded than formerly; and this condition renders it impossible to prevent
the spread of (and so the mortality from) zymotic diseases without the
early removal and complete isolation of the infected from the healthy;
which to be effective, must bo done in other parishes as well as this.
Br Order,
ROBERT PAGET,
Vestry Clerk.
Vbstry Hall, Clerkenwll,
March 9th, 1672.