Dr. Gresswell's report to the Local Government Board on the prevalence of enteric fever in the registration sub-district of Hebden Bridge / [D. Astley Gresswell].

  • Gresswell, D. Astley (Dan Astley)
Date:
[1885]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Gresswell's report to the Local Government Board on the prevalence of enteric fever in the registration sub-district of Hebden Bridge / [D. Astley Gresswell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ;l/J£ JDr^ Gresswell’s Report to the Local Government Board on the [Bi^Afrr jPrevalence of Enteric Fever in the Registration Sub-District a Collectiong of Hebden Bridge. +p « -2S7 George Buchanan, Medical Department, April 11, 1885. “ The registration sub-district of Hebden Bridge is situate in Yorkshire, its chief town, Hebden Bridge, being 8 miles W.N.W. from Halifax. It comprises the townships of Wadsworth, Heptonstall, Erringden, and the lowest third of Stansfield, and it covers an area of 18,759 acres. It is divided into the Hebden Bridge urban and Todmorden rural districts, and its population at the census of 1881 was 12,314. It is a portion of the watershed of the Biver Calder near its source. It is very hilly, and presents extensive tracts of peat-moorland. The geologic formation is Millstone Grit, covered by a small depth of soil. Enteric fever has been endemic in this part for many years, at times in a sporadic, at times in an epidemic form. It took an epidemic form in the autumn of 1884, and this inquiry (in February 1885) was directed towards the determination of the cause of its continued prevalence, and of its occasional exacerbations. The urban district will be especially dealt with, such reference only as seems necessary being made to the rural district. A description of the local sanitary conditions may form a fitting prelude to an attempt at the explanation of the prevalence of the fever. The urban district of Hebden Bridge has an area of 357 acres, and takes in part of the townships of Heptonstall, Wadsworth, Erringden, and Stansfield. The inhabitants in 1881 numbered 5,008. They are concentrated mainly in the town called Hebden Bridge ; a few are at Mythylmroyd, about a mile to the east of the latter town. Hebden Bridge is a small manufacturing town ; it lies in a deep valley on the banks of the Calder at its junction with the Biver Hebden. The slopes of the valley are in parts rocky, in parts wooded; in greater part they are pasture and moor land. The Calder flows almost due eastward at the bottom of the valley; it is joined on the north by the Hebden, and is bounded on either side by a strip (wider on the north) of clay, sand, and gravel soil. The houses of Hebden Bridge are almost confined to the north side of the Calder; they lie at the bottom of the valley, and in terraces on the lower slopes. The Hebden joining the Calder on the north roughly divides the town into eastern and western halves. Most of the inhabitants work in factories. The staple industries are cotton- spinning, weaving, fustian-manufacturing, dyeing, and wholesale clothes-making. The population of the district increased from 3,666 in 1871 to 5,008 in 1881. This rapid increase is attributable chiefly to the great demand for fustian and ready-made clothes, which are sent all over the country, and now are being sent to the colonies. This district receives a large rainfall; 45^ inches of rain fell at Todmorden (in the same valley as and four miles to the west of Hebden Bridge) last year, and this, moreover, when the rainfall over nearly the whole of Great Britain was decidedly below the average. In rainy seasons the river overflows its banks, flooding the lower parts of Hebden Bridge. It has been known to flood them to a depth of even two or three feet in the main streets. The habitations are, most of them, labourers’ cottages. Building land is costly, and the demand for cottages is largely in excess of the supply ; as a consequence the cottages are cramped for space, both outside and in. Cottages on the flat are built, many of them, back-to-back; many even of those which have been recently built. Most of the rest are four-storey structures ; the two lower storeys set into the hillside face one street and are occupied as one tenement, the two upper face the street above and are occupied either as one tenement or as two, front and back. Many sanitary defects attend upon these modes of building. The back-to-back cottages have no through ventilation, for though the making of ventilating flues in the party- wall is enjoined in the twelfth of the local byelaws* (passed in 1867), even this * Byelaw No. 12 runs thus: “ That no building shall be erected in any square, court, alley, yard, or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not', nearer than ten yards of the building or boundary on the opposite side of such square, court, alley, yard, or passage, and that in the case of houses built back-to-back provision must be made for a thorough draught by ventilating flues in the party-walls-”