Metropolitan workhouse infirmaries, &c. : Copy of the report of Dr. Edward Smith, Poor Law inspector and medical officer to the Poor Law Board, on the Metropolitan Workhouse infirmaries and sick wards / (Viscount Enfield).

  • Smith, Edward, 1818?-1874.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metropolitan workhouse infirmaries, &c. : Copy of the report of Dr. Edward Smith, Poor Law inspector and medical officer to the Poor Law Board, on the Metropolitan Workhouse infirmaries and sick wards / (Viscount Enfield). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    (E.) In many cases the ventilators defeated their object by being too small, but in others by being too large, and too imperfectly covered by perforated metal to protect the inmates from direct draughts. (F.) In like manner the air bricks were often so open and large as to allow great currents of air to pass through the floors and ceilings, and were not pro- perly covered; and as this could not be borne they defeated their own object. (G.) The aged seek warmth. Inmates, of whatever age, living in the wards did not notice the foulness of the atmosphere, and the deficient ventilation led to elevation of the temperature, and caused intolerance of cold air ; and hence, no complaint of want of ventilation, but rather of too much ventilation, occurred, and the ventilators were closed. (II.) In some workhouses, as the Strand, Wandsworth, Rotherhithe, and St. George’s-in-the-East, the ventilation of certain wards was effectually prevented by enclosing the landings, or the entrance from the stairs or passages, by wooden lobbies, and leaving no other opening but the door. Some of the small wards at the Strand were, from this cause chiefly, highly discreditable to the officials, and injurious to the inmates. Indeed, these wards were the worst ventilated of any in the London workhouses, and that for a cause so simple and evident that the medical officers and other officials ought to have noticed it, and have called the attention of the guardians specially to it. (I.) The special reports, in the Appendix, will show that blank walls exist, in many wards in the workhouses, in which ventilating windows might have been placed ; and I have pointed out. the various improvements which are neces- sary in the different workhouses. It only now remains for me to indicate those in which the ventilation of the whole or of certain of the wards was exceedingly defective, and those in which the general arrangements for ventilation were unusually good. The former were the Strand and St. Margaret’s at Westminster, almost univer- sally, with certain parts of St. Saviour’s, Greenwich, Marylebone, St. Giles’, Clerkenwell, Whitechapel, Mile End, St. James’, Kensington, Rotherhithe, St. George's-in-the-East, St. Pancras, St. Luke’s Middlesex, St. Mary’s at Newington and Hampstead. The latter w^ere St. George’s at Brompton, and in Mount-street, the Infirmaries at St. Saviour’s, and St. Giles’, Marylebone, Holborn (not the room for imbe- ciles), Whitechapel, (except some foul and lunacy wards) East London, Islington, St. George-in-the-East (new wards), Paddington, and Camberwell; but it must not be inferred that the ventilation was therefore quite satisfactory in any, and certainly not in all the buildings in any workhouse. The extremes are, no doubt, the Strand on the one hand, and St. George’s at Brompton, on the other. Nursing. The propriety of appointing paid nurses has now been almost universally admitted, for in only four workhouses did they not exist at the time of our visit, and in one of these the guardians were about to appoint one. Those work- houses are St. Olave, St. George-the-Martyr. St. James, and Islington. The extent to which this principle is in operation is such, that the number of paid nurses in the different workhouses varies from 19 in Marylebone, 1G in St. Pancras, and 12 at Shoreditch, to one at Bermondsey^, St. Martin’s, Holborn, Kensington, St. George-in-the-East, and Hampstead. So, in like manner, the necessity for further appointments is not uniform, except in this, that with only two or three exceptions additional nurses are needed. 372. c 4 Part I. Details of the Inspection. Ventilation. Nursing. The