[Report 1882] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire Combined Sanitary District.

  • Berkshire Combined Sanitary District.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1882] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire Combined Sanitary District. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reconstructed in accordance with my advice. The next was at Hermitage, a fortnight later, and two children died in this family. It appeared' on enquiry that there had already been some fatal attacks at the farther end of this village (which is situated partly in this sanitary district, and partly in that of Wantage, the national school being in the latter, as well as the earlier cases just referred to), and it had co-existed with scarlet fever, of which a few attacks were reported at Oare—a mile farther north. The sanitary condition of the cottages where the illness broke out was very satisfactory; but the children attacked, like the majority of those who subsequently took the complaint, either themselves attended the Hermitage School, or had brothers and sisters who went there. The school not being in the Newbury District, and Wantage not in the Sanitary Combination of Districts, neither the Authority nor myself were able to interfere further than that at my request a letter was written to the Wantage Authority, pointing out the facts and inviting their attention to the matter, &c. In February, scarlet fever appeared in Welford parish, at Wickham, causing two deaths in one family; the complaint was probably imported, and the cottage—old and poorly ventilated, but clean. In March, there were attacks at the Chieveley end of Thatcham, and at Bussock Wood, as also at Donnington on the outskirts of Newbury, and situated, like it, mostly on the alluvial deposits of the Kennet, or on the chalk, there being at the same time three fatal attacks in the adjoining Urban District. In April, a family living at Long Lane, Thatcham, close to Hermitage School (which was attended by the children), had five out of seven children attacked, the illnesses being entered in the pauper sick returns as ‘‘ typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.'' The cottage was exceptionally clean, but rather overcrowded from the number of children; a dry earth closet in use; all •slops utilized on the garden, and the water supply fairly good. The first to be seriously attacked was not one of the children attending the school, but an elder sister, the others having