[Report 1903] / Medical Officer of Health, Newton Abbot R.D.C., Newton Abbot U.D.C., Dawlish U.D.C.

  • Newton Abbot (England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1903] / Medical Officer of Health, Newton Abbot R.D.C., Newton Abbot U.D.C., Dawlish U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Scavenging. House refuse is removed three times a week in the more densely populated parts of the town, and twice a week in the outskirts. Dairies, Cowsheds, &c. These have been inspected from time to time by Mr. Judd and myself, and generally found satisfactory. Some milk is brought in from farms in the Newton Abbot Rural District. Slaughterhouses. There are one public and three private slaughterhouses in the town, which have been kept in good order. I have also visited all the Workshops on the list ; details are given in Mr. Judd’s report. HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES. In the early part of November I made a house-to- house inspection of the Courts, Hillman’s Meadow, the Bowden Hill district, and Vale Road, Decoy—in all 442 dwellings. The following details of this investigation, which affords a comparison of various types of working class houses in the town, may be of interest ; it deals, moreover, with the housing of 1,684 persons, or t of the population of the Newton Urban District. It may be prefaced that, though the greater part of Newton Abbot is of quite recent date, yet certain areas, including Wolborough Street, East Street, and Bank Street, in the parish of Wolborough ; Highweek Street and Exeter Road, in the locality formerly known as Newton Bushel, with their courts, have been in existence for many generations. These courts therefore, generally speaking, may be taken to represent the working class dwellings of presanitary ages, and I have therefore classed them together as being on the whole of the most inferior type in the district. In some the tenements are obviously very old ; for instance in Court 5, Wolborough Street, there are four cottages ol Tudor style, constructed partly of stone and partly of cob ; possibly these constituted in their time one house of a better class, and there is evidence to this effect in the doors of intercommunication on the upper story. The court system is expressed in three types. (1) and the most objectionable—a narrow passage a few feet wide with tenements on both sides, so that direct