[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney].

  • Hackney (London, England). Board of Works.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    8 laid in concrete, yet the rarity with which single drains when properly made and laid get choked, and the ease and speed with which the Sanitary Officers can deal with them when choked or defective, render in my opinion separate drainage of houses preferable to block drainage, at any rate in more than pairs of houses. The use of improved traps in the yards, and the disconnection of the sink and bath wastes from the drains, and, when this cannot be done, the introduction of traps between the baths or sink.wastes and the drains, which has been of late years so extensively carried out by the Sanitary Staff, will however, undoubtedly tend to prevent the ingress of materials likely to choke the drains. As however the chief inlet for cloths, dusters, scrubbing brushes and like things is the water.closet, these causes of choked drains will be kept out only to a comparatively small extent. A circular letter having been received from the Local Government Board, requesting information as to the extent to which the Regulations made for this District, under the 35th section of the Sanitary Act, had been carried out. I was requested by the Sanitary Committee, to whom the matter was referred by the Board, to draw up a report on the subject. In accordance with this resolution I presented the following report to them, which was laid before the Board, and a copy sent to the President of the Local Government Board:— Soon after the Sanitary Act was passed application was made by the Sanitary Committee of this Board requesting that power should be given to them to frame draft Regulations under the Act. On the 15th September, 1866, a copy of these Regulations was forwarded to the Secretary of State, the Right Honorable J. H. Walpole, and confirmed by him, and as soon as possible put into action. As a first step towards this, two Sub.Inspectors were appointed to measure the dwelling. rooms in all the houses occupied by the poorer classes, and to enter the measurements in books kept at the Town Hall for that purpose. The rooms in 4,600 houses were measured before