Paddington : report from the Medical Officer of Health on the means for carrying out disinfection in an adequate and effectual manner in the parish.

  • Hardwicke, William.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paddington : report from the Medical Officer of Health on the means for carrying out disinfection in an adequate and effectual manner in the parish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    To the Members of the Vestry of them Parish of Paddington. Gentlemen, At the request of the Sanitary and Public Health Committee, I have been engaged for some time in making detailed inquiries into the present means that exist in this Parish, and what future plans may be adopted for carrying out disinfection of clothing, bedding, linen and such other articles that have become contaminated by infectious disease. I am not aware that there exists, either in this Parish or in any other iu the metropolis, a really efficient means of carrying out, either publicly or in private, in accordance with the Sections of the Sanitary Act of 1866, suitable processes of disinfection, or purification of clothing, bedding, linen, carpets, curtains, or other articles that may need it. I entertain a belief that if such an establishment existed and were made publicly known, it would be frequently resorted to by a class of persons willing to pay for its use, and that the money returns would go a long way towards meeting the working expenses of the Institution, or even yield a moderate profit. I am fully satisfied, from cases that come under my observation almost daily, that the necessity has arisen of attempting to carry out, as far as practicable, the intention of the Legislature, expressed in Section 22 & 23 of the Sanitary Act of 1866. On examining the returns of mortality from contagious diseases in Paddington for the last 3 years, we find them to be annually 342, 378, 325—in all, 1045. These deaths represent about 15,000 cases of illness, including scarlatina, measles, whooping cough, small pox, fever, erysipelas, &c.—Diseases that admit of prevention to a great extent by isolation and other precautionary measures that might be taken when first cases occur. The fact ought to be more generally known, that scarlatina, both as regards deaths and frequency of the attack of the disease, has been far from exclusively confined to the poorer class of the com- munity either in this Parish or elsewhere. In Paddington there have been 98 deaths from scarlatina in the