[Report 1905] / Medical Officer of Health, Hastings County Borough.

  • Hastings (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1905] / Medical Officer of Health, Hastings County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    These two groups of parishes, with the parishes of St. Helen and of Hollington St. John, constitute the separate “ localities ” into which, for the purposes of the Local Government Board tables to be found at the end of this report, I have divided the Borough. These sub-divisions are convenient also in that they roughly represent the popularly accepted ideas of “ Hastings ” and “ St. Leonards,” with their respective semi-rural dependencies of St. Helens and Hollington. For purposes of Sanitary Administration the Borough is divided into four districts: Western, Central, Eastern, and Northern ; the last named is the area added to the Borough at the extension in 1897. It is partly rural in character; the other three divisions are purely urban. Each of these districts is under the supervision of a Sanitary Inspector who exercises therein the powers conferred on such an official under the Public Health Act, the Factory Acts, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, and other kindred enactments, The Chief Occupations of the Inhabitants. The district is largely a residential one, the chief industries of the place are the letting of lodgings to the visitors who frequent the town as a health or holiday resort, and the carrying- on of the many business houses which minister to their needs. Thus the proportion of domestic-servants and of shop- assistants in the population exceeds that of many places. At the East End of the Borough there is a considerable fishing community. Physical Characters. The neighbourhood of Hastings is undulating and well wooded, and the County-Borough itself, comprising an area of 4857 acres (including 373 acres of foreshore), is bounded on the North and East by hills, whose highest point of 599 feet is attained at Fairlight, to the North-East of Hastings. The town faces South on the English Channel, along whose shores it extends, almost perfectly level, to a distance of nearly three miles. Running inland are a series of hills and valleys tending northward, intersecting the basin in which the town lies, and affording shelter from the winds and a great variety of Climate ;