[Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Tipton Borough.

  • Tipton (England : Parish). Borough Council.
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Tipton Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/26 (page 13)
    . r f. ... ' ' ** really up to -date and labour saving and with all those conveniences which we associate with an optimum standard of amenity. For instance to deal with immediate need, the Council has with some reluctance agreed to the building of a number of prefabricated houses and i.s endeavouring to placo them on sites where they will net interfere with the building of permanent houses on a large scale later on. There is a certain tendency to look down on the prefabricated house. Some of them are certainly not pretty and one's experience of such things as steel houses after tho last war is not comforting. But actually there has been on immense advance made since then and several types of tho present day prefabricated house will make exceedingly comfortable and labour saving homes for small families. I feel therefore that the policy of erecting prefabricated houses is right. Very great oare needs to be taken however if they are not placed so close together as to prevent reasonable privacy and that the estates composed of them shall be tastefully and pleasantly laid out so that even if the individual houses from the outside lack attraction, the estate is on the whole made to be a pleasant one to live in. Some Amenities. A house should not merely provide shelter for a family but it should be the centre of happy home life, S.ome consideration therefore should be shown in its planning for the needs of every member of the family. Moreover a house should be so designed as to educate and direct the inclinations of those living in it to hygienic and decent living. ’For instance, a bath is provided in the hopes that all in the house -will use it, a garden in the hope that all will recreate themselves in it, use it for the production of vegetables and flavors or at least keep it nice. We ought also to provide in every house a downstairs lavatory fitted with a handbaain if possible adjacent to the back door. This would be in effect a cloakroom in -which working members of the family can use on their return from work and which would be handy for the housewife in her kitchen. The outside lavatory, unnecessarily cold, damp and disagreeable, should be regarded as a thing of the past. A p roperly equipped downstairs lavatory- cloakroom can put an end to the thoroughly undesirable habit of members of the family performing their ablutions in the kitchen sink. Similarly where possible a sliding serving hatch should communicate between the kitchen and the living roqtn in the hope of encouraging the partaking of meals and the general family life to take place in the spacious living room rather than the small kitchen, and also to save labour, I see no objection to the upstairs lavatory being a combined bathroom and W.G. There is one real advantage and that is that the use of hot water in this apartment for washing imparts heat. It is desirable that the upstairs lavatory should not be absolutely cold in the winter as amongst other tilings one cannot exclude the possibility of it being used by sick persons going from warn beds with resultant rapid fall in temperature. If the upstairs lavatory is a separate apartment, it might be possible to lead the hot water pipes through it thereby providing some heat. Another unfortunate result of too close a restriction on permitted area is the continued existence of the small bedroom, usually knavn in these parts as the boxroom, if it were a boxroom it would not matter so much, and as a bedroom it may only be intended for one child. But it tends to get inhabited by adults for which it is imdeiufcrto. It is further an extremely difficult apartment to furnish as it usually contains a projection due to providing the necessary spacing over the staircase. It is profoundly to be hoped that very soon this type of bedroom will be regarded as obsolete. In these days it is not only necessary to provide accommodation in a shed or otherwise for coal, but also a place for perambulators and bicycles which will otherwise be kept in the hall. We are alleged to be encouraging the rearing of families and increase in the birth-rate. That means perambulators. We should also surely encourage, for health reasons, our younger workers to go to and frem work through the open air on bioyoles rather than in ill-ventilated and infection-laden conveyances. it would be hard to estimate how many complaints have been caught either by standing in exposed places waiting for a vehicle or fretn inhaling infection in a vehicle. -13