[Report 1889] / Medical Officer of Health, Salford County Borough.

  • Salford (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1889] / Medical Officer of Health, Salford County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Trafford Road, Cross Lane, The Crescent, and Oldfield Road, especially in enumeration-districts 72, 73, and 49, and on the other side of Oldfield Road there is improvement in Nos. 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 44, though higher mortalities appear in some of the districts adjacent to Oldfield Road, and increases are found pretty generally between Taylerson Street and the River Irwell since the sanitary survey for the years 1879-1883. The question of improved Hospital Accommodation for the isolation and care of cases of infectious sickness has been definitely advanced, and the accepted scheme is much more suited to the needs of the Borough than the one first decided on. To my mind, the erection of an hospital for only loo beds would have been not only insufficient for the Borough, but this very inadequacy might eventually have endangered the well-earned popularity for hospital-isolation which exists in Salford. The final decision of the Council to provide an hospital containing 184 beds, each bed having an air-allowance of over 2,000 cubic feet, must be hailed as a much nearer approach to the needs of the Borough and the comfort of the patients who are to be isolated in it. The subject of Insanitary Dwellings has been brought prominently to the notice of the Health Committee in this as in other Boroughs, and has come up for frequent and careful consideration by that Committee and by the Council. I have shewn in detail in this Report the course which has been pursued in respect of Insanitary Dwellings in the Borough since my appointment, and further action by the Corporation is now naturally in abeyance until the question of responsibility—whether it be District or General—is decided. In Appendix IV.—the Report of the Insanitary Dwellings Committee—will be found a list of several groups of property that require to be dealt with. To these others may readily be added, but I trust that the Council will secure amelioration in the condition of those first reported on before proceeding to make additions to their number. The Coloured Map, already referred to, shows that the next steps of the Health Committee should be in particular localities of the Regent Road District, even though the probable extension of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway will effect a demolition of between 300 and 400 houses in the Regent Road and Greengate Districts, which, according to the Borough Engineer’s Report, ‘are, for the most part, houses of very indifferent quality, the retention of which could not be desired by anyone.”