Dr. H. F. Parson's report on the general sanitary condition of the Bedlingshire urban district, and on the recent prevalence of scarlet fever in the district.

  • Parsons, H. F.
Date:
1880
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. H. F. Parson's report on the general sanitary condition of the Bedlingshire urban district, and on the recent prevalence of scarlet fever in the district. 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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    A Dr. H. P. Parsons’s Report on the General Sanitary Condition of the Bedlingtonshire Urban District, and on the recent Prevalence of Scarlet Fever in the District. George Buchanan, ■ Medical Department, February 19, 1880. The Urban Sanitary District of Bedlingtonshire is conterminous with the township and ancient parish of Bedlington. The district, which was in byegone times a part of the domain of the Bishop of Durham, was formerly a detached part of the county of Durham, but by an Act of Parliament passed 40 or 50 years ago it was united, with Northumberland. It is included in the parliamentary borough of Morpeth, but for municipal purposes it forms a separate district, having been detached in 1862, when a Local Board was formed. The area of the district is 8,436 acres. The district is bounded on the east by the North Sea, on the north and south by the rivers Wansbeck and Blyth, respectively, both streams running in narrow steep valleys, and being tidal in the lower part of their course, and on the west it adjoins the borough of Morpeth, and the parish of Stannington in the Castle Ward Union. For registration purposes it is included, with a number of other lesser townships, in the Bedlington sub-district of the Morpeth Union. The general level of the district is somewhat elevated, especially towards the west, the highest point, Ewart Hill, at its south-west corner being 242 feet above the sea; and it shelves gradually eastwards to the sea, where a line of sand hills fringes the shore. A small brook, the Sleekburn, drains the district, flowing eastward into the river Blyth at the upper end of Blyth Harbour. Geologically the whole of the district rests on the coal-measures, which are here worked on an extensive scale. The two principal seams worked, the Yard Coal and the Low Main have an aggregate thickness of eight feet. The surface soil is a stiff clay. The coal-measures are traversed from east to west by basaltic dykes; one such dyke runs under the village of Bedlington, and protects it from being undermined. There are or were until recently nine large collieries in the district; one of these has been recently abandoned, and two others are standing idle at the present, owing to the depressed state of the coal trade. Four of the collieries belong to one company, the Bedlington Coal Company. With the exception of tradesmen and persons engaged in agriculture, the population consists almost exclusively of coal miners. There are no manufactures except two or three brickworks. The north shore of Blyth Harbour lies within the district, but there is little shipping on this side of the harbour, and very few persons following maritime pursuits reside there. Few of the women go out to work. »Owing to the depressed state of trade, and the collieries standing idle, there has been much emigration from the district, and there are a large number of empty houses. At Netherton, where the collieries have been abandoned, there are some 300 houses unoccupied, long rows of cottages standing deserted without a single tenant. The rateable value of the district, which in 1875 was 83,0002., has fallen to 36,0002., owing to the diminished output of the collieries (the rateable value being calculated upon the preceding year’s output) and to the number of houses unoccupied. The collieries represent about half the rateable value of the district. Streets and Dwellings.—Bedlington, which is the oldest and largest place in the district, is a large village or small town, consisting of a single broad street about three quarters of a mile long, with some shorter streets and yards leading out of it on the north side. In the ecclesiastical district of Choppington, a mile or two to the north, are two considerable hamlets, called Scotland Gate and Guide Post. Netherton, Stakeford, Barrington, Sleekburn, West Sleekburn, and Cambois, are other groups of houses consisting almost entirely of long rows of pitmen’s dwellings. In Bedlingtonshire, as in other places in the Northumberland coalfield, it is the custom for the colliery proprietors to provide houses in which the pitmen live rent free; all expenses such as repairs, rates, and scavenging falling upon the owners. If the colliery owners have not houses suflicient for the men in their employ, they select those most careful and cleanly in their habits as tenants, and the others have to reside elsewhere, an allowance beino-