Mr. Shirley Murphy's report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary condition of Gravesend / [Shirley F. Murphy].

  • Murphy, Shirley F.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Shirley Murphy's report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary condition of Gravesend / [Shirley F. Murphy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    OFFICIAL COPY. vrLJLCOMT LIBRARY Ml Shirley Murphy’s Report to the Local Government Board on the Sanitary Condition of Gravesend. euerai Collections +P R. Thorne Thorne, Assistant Medical Officer, August 22, 1885. Gravesend is a Municipal Borough and Registration District, having in 1881 a population of 23,302 persons in 4,019 houses. It is situated on the right bank of the Thames, 20 miles below the metropolis. Mr. Netten Radcliffe, reporting on this town in 1877, gives the following account of its topographical and geological circum¬ stances :— “ The town of Gravesend, in which almost the whole of the population and houses of the borough are collected, occupies the slopes and summit of a hill which rises from the border of the Thames to an altitude of 175 feet above Ordnance datum. On the north the town extends along the bank of the river, and is bounded by the stream; on the south it is bounded by the open country ; on the east by the marshes which fringe the right bank of the river in that direction, and by the cultivated rising ground above them; and on the west it is separated by meadow and garden land, with the exception of certain lines of buildings on the main connecting thoroughfares, from the Urban Sanitary District of Northfleet, including Northfleet and the village of Perry Street. With the exception of the portion of the town immediately on the banks of the river and about the principal street, the High Street, where the buildings are huddled together about narrow thoroughfares, passages, and courts (some of the latter closed), after the fashion of old seaport towns, the houses have more or less open space in rear, and are for the most part built along streets which are usually broad and open, relatively to the height of the buildings on each side, and which cross each other commonly at right angles. There are few localities of the town, indeed, which are not freely swept by every movement of the air. “ The greater part of the town lies upon chalk, here horizontally embedded, and, except the uppermost stratum, apparently not much fractured or fissured. But the higher portion of the town is built upon a bed of sand, gravel, loam, laminated clay, and other clays (an outlier of the lower tertiary formation of the London basin, belonging to the Thanet and Woolwich series, which here caps the chalk) ; and a small section on the bank of the river and in the low-lying ground rests on alluvium. With the exception, it may be (the question being as yet undetermined), of a few houses situated on the edge of the trough, which apparently holds on the higher ground the cap of sand, gravel, and clays just described, and the houses in the lowest part of the town, of which the foundations must rest near to the water-line of the chalk, the site of Gravesend, from the porosity of the soil on which it stands and from the facility with which the rainfall flows off, is very dry. “ Gravesend, in fact, apart from its proximity to the marshes on the east, occupies a site which offers peculiar facilities for securing the wholesomeness of the town. Moreover, in all except the oldest portions—namely, on the river side and about the / LONDON: Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office, AND SOLD BY KNIGHT & Co., 90, Fleet Street ; SHAW & SONS, Fetter Lane ; HADDEN, BEST, & Co., West Harding Street, Fetter Lane ; AND P. S. KING & SON, Canada Building, King Street, S.W. 1885. Price Tioopence. o 183S9. 200.—8/85. Wt. 7533. E. & S. A No. 10.