Mr Netten Radcliffe's report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary condition of Gravesend, Kent.

  • Radcliffe, J. Netten.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr Netten Radcliffe's report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary condition of Gravesend, Kent. 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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    Mr. Netten Radcliffe’s Report to the Local Government Board on the Sanitary Condition of Gravesend, Kent. George Buchanan, Assistant Medical Officer, September 24, 1877. The following Report relates to an inquiry, carried out under instructions from the Local Government Board, as to a series of complaints made to the Board by several persons resident in Gravesend with reference to the prevalence of dangerous infectious disease in the town, to certain alleged defects in its sanitary arrangements and adminis- tration, and to the existence of sundry specified nuisances. The attention of the Board was particularly called to :— (1.) The prevalence of scarlet fever of a malignant type, and of enteric fever, and the absence of any means of isolating cases of infectious disease ; (2.) The want of sewerage, the common use of cesspools, and the unwholesome con- ditions thence arising; (3.) A great nuisance at the canal basin east of the town, caused by the deposit there and by the carting away of highly offensive stuff, including decaying fish, used as manure ; (4.) A nuisance from the discharge of sewage on the bed of the river, above low-water mark, at the foot of the town pier; and (5.) A nuisance from a deposit of vegetable matter, manure, and rubbish on Windmill Hill. Each of these complaints has been subjected to investigation, the result of which I now proceed to report. Gravesend, situated on the right bank of the Thames, 20 miles below the metropolis, and the place of entrance to and departure from the port of London, is a municipal borough and registration district. It includes two parishes, namely, Gravesend and Milton-by-Gravesend, and has an area of 1,256 statute acres. In 1871 the population of the borough was 21,265, and the number of inhabited houses 3,485. 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 bjr 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, that are not freely swept by every movement of the air. The greater part of the town lies upon chalk, here horizontally bedded, and, except the uppermost stratum, apparently not much fractured or fissured. But the higher portion B. 600. A