Dr. Airy's report to the local government board on the sanitary condition of Lymington (Hants) urban sanitation district.

  • Airy, Hubert.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Airy's report to the local government board on the sanitary condition of Lymington (Hants) urban sanitation 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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    Dr. Airy’s Report to the Local Government Board on the Sanitary Condition of the Lymington (Hants) Urban Sanitary District. George Buchanan, Assistant Medical Officer, March 12, 1879. The Board, having in the last two years received complaints as to the sanitary condition of the town of Lymington, and failing to obtain information of satisfactory action on the part of the Sanitary Authority towards improvement, ordered an inquiry into the matter to be made by one of their medical inspectors. Having been instructed to make this inquiry, I visited Lymington on December 18th, 19th, and 20th, 1878, and now beg to offer the following report:— The Lymington Urban Sanitary District to which my instructions apply is co- extensive with the parish of that name, and occupies an area of 1,515 acres (including 742 acres of water and foreshore) on the west bank of an estuary opening to the Solent, which in its lower tidal part bears the name of the Lymington river, while above the town it is known as the Boldre river, taking the name of a village on its eastern bank. The little seaport town of Lymington consists principally of one broad main street (High Street) which occupies the crest of a hill about 80 feet high, ranging nearly east and west, and descends steeply to a network of narrower streets near the water’s edge. The hill is capped with a stratum of loose angular gravel to a depth of 10 or 12 feet; below this is a bed of blue clay 19 feet deep, and below the clay a bed of fine pure sand of much greater depth than those above it. These beds are well seen in a range of pits immediately to the north of the town, where all three—gravel, clay, and sand— are dug for different purposes. On the Geological Survey Map these strata are referred to the Osborne and Headonbeds of the Fluvio-Marine (Isle of Wight) series, belonging to the Eocene formation. The feature of most importance to be noted in relation to health is the porosity of the surface gravel in the higher parts of the town, and the impervious character of the clay bed which underlies it. Under these conditions it would almost necessarily happen that liquid impurities sinking into the porous gravel should be carried laterally into any well that might be sunk in the vicinity. This point will be seen to possess double importance in view of the existing mode of filth disposal and water-supply in Lymington. In former times the staple industry of Lymington was the manufacture of salt by evaporation of salt water in extensive shallow ponds, or “ salterns.” The salt mines of Cheshire have supplanted this branch of trade, and the “ salterns ” have relapsed into marsh. The town now depends chiefly upon the advantages of its position as a yachting station. Thirty or forty yachts may be seen laid up here in the winter, and in the summer the place is much resorted to by yachting parties, for whose accommo- dation a large number of lodging-houses have been built on low ground by the side of the Lymington river to the south of the town, forming the suburb named Waterford. Here also is a large bathing establishment, and a coastguard station. Large yacht building yards, with coal and brewery wharves, line the riverside, and a wooden jetty gives a landing-place for a service of small steamboats plying between Lymington and the Isle of Wight. The parish of Lymington, which comprises also the rural villages of Buckland and Woodside, had at the census of 1861 a population of 4,098 persons occupying 802 houses (an average of 5T persons per house). In 1871 the population was 4,295, and the number of inhabited houses was 891, giving an average of 4'8 persons per house. To assist me in estimating the probable increase of the population since 1871, the clerk to the Lymington Local Board, Mr. B. G. Burford, has kindly furnished me with a return of the number of inhabited houses in the district, year by year, up to the present time. Applying to these numbers the rate of dwellers per house which prevailed at the last census, viz. 4‘8, we obtain, for successive years, the population numbers given below in Table I. Against these I have given from the death registers the yearly mortality, including deaths in the union workhouse, and the corresponding death-rate per thousand of the population. K #77. Wt. B. 1258. A