The dwellings of the poor. Report of the Mansion House Council. The year ending December 31st, 1890.

  • Mansion House Council.
Date:
Cassell & Co.,
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dwellings of the poor. Report of the Mansion House Council. The year ending December 31st, 1890. 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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    * We have an excellent medical officer (Dr. W. R. Smith) who has worked wonders. We have the two inspectors and regular inspection. The pail system has been tried, and found so obviously advantageous, both from the sanitary and the economical point of view, that it is being extended to the whole of the town. Landlords are forced to provide proper flushing cisterns to every closet. We have obtained, since the passing of Ritchie’s Act, fifty-three orders closing houses as unfit for human habitation. Ten “ houses ” have been actually demolished since the Act, and eight shortly before ; the first being one in my parish, to which I drew special attention in my first article. The contention that nothing was wrong because the health of the town was good I have demolished by publishing each quarter tables compiled from the British Medical Journal’s returns, showing that Woolwich is always near, and frequently at, the bottom of all the South London districts. For the last quarter of 1890 Woolwich ranks 38th out of the 41 sanitary districts of the whole of the metropolis, with a death-rate of 303 ; and while the infantile death-rate for all London was 174, the figure for Woolwich was not less than 255 ! This is not inevitable mortality, and therefore it is, in part, infanticide. Your Local Committee does not meet frequently, as a new and most vigorous body, called the Tenants’ Defence League, does a grand work in searching out all sanitary defects, and forwarding them to me. I then pass them on to the Plumstead or the Woolwich Local Board, according to locality ; and both bodies have been kept busy, as I have frequently entered twenty complaints in their books in one day. I have received every attention and help from the surveyors of both bodies. The poor now at last know their rights, and how they may be obtained. A friend of mine is agent for some cottages in my parish- One of the tenants pointed out a defect and asked for attention. He said he was very busy with other property, but would come to it in time. “If you don’t do it at once, I’ll tell the parson,” was the answer which he retailed to me, with some amusement. To be the people’s tribune you must, apparently, become the land- lords’ bogey! Your work, perhaps, gains an additional standpoint and place of advantage by the fact of my now being a member of the Local Board. To become at once archer and target has not entered my mind, but on receiving a requisition from working men, I consented to try my lucL at the election in August. Nearly three thousand more votes were polled than in the previous election, and I was returned, only second to a * It will be remembered that this Council was instrumental in obtaining the inser- tion of a Clause in the Notification of Diseases Act, 1889, compelling the appointment of a Medical Officer of Health.