Report on back-to-back houses : a report on relative mortality in through and back-to-back houses in certain towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire / by L.W. Darra Mair ; with an introduction by the Medical Officer of the Board ; presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of His Majesty.

  • Mair, Ludovic William Darra, 1866-1912.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report on back-to-back houses : a report on relative mortality in through and back-to-back houses in certain towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire / by L.W. Darra Mair ; with an introduction by the Medical Officer of the Board ; presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of His Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    a statistically complete correction to be made for tlie influence of age and sex, was obviously essential to disclose the existence of any marked divergence in respect of sex and age between the in- habitants of the selected through houses and those of the selected back-to-back houses, and to enable such divergence, to some extent at least, to be taken into account. It was arranged, also, that, in the course of this detailed census, particulars as to rent should be obtained. In addition, it was also necessary, in order to ascertain the deaths which had occurred among the populations of the selected areas, that the death registers for ten years should be carefully searched, and details as to sex, age, and cause of death extracted. It became apparent, therefore, that if the work of carrying out these investigations was not to involve the officers of the local authorities undertaking them in an excessive expenditure of time, it would be practicable to select small areas only in any given town, even where the required conditions could be found. It was thus all the more necessary to select areas in as many towns as possible, with a view not only to obtain comparative data from a variety of places, but also to secure a sufficiently large popula- tion in the aggregate as their basis. It may be urged that although this method supplies a number of small instances of comparison between through and back-to- back houses, the data in each instance must be too small to be of value, and that the data so obtained as to back-to-back houses in one town, though comparable with the data as to through houses in the same town, cannot be comparable with those as to through houses in another town, and vice versa. This objection is valid so far as the comparison of areas individually is con- cerned, but it is clear that if in each of several towns the data as to the selected back-to-back houses are comparable with data as to the selected through houses, it must follow that the aggre- gate of the data are also strictly comparable. I spent much time in company with medical officers of health and other officials of districts in the West Hiding in attempts to discover areas complying with the conditions laid down above. In some towns, of which the most notable was Sheffield, it proved to be impossible to find such an area, while in others it was only with great difficulty and after many studies of maps and visits of inspection that success was attained. The principal difficulty arose in connection with the comparability of the houses them- selves. Frequently through houses, though adjacent to or among back-to-back houses, were altogether of a superior class, or were of much more recent construction; sometimes, too, where other- wise comparable houses could be found, they had been in occupa- tion for less than ten years; and so forth. It was inevitable, of course, that neither the newest back-to-back houses with the most modern improvements, nor the newest through houses, could be brought under review. Eventually areas were chosen in thirteen different towns, and I satisfied myself in each case that the sanitary circumstances of these areas were reasonably good, that they were not subject to unduly unhealthy conditions, and that although, as will presently appear, the average rent of the through houses was greater than