General report of the Commission appointed for improving the sanitary condition of barracks and hospitals.

  • Great Britain. Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General report of the Commission appointed for improving the sanitary condition of barracks and hospitals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    It is now a barrack for 91 men. If it were proposed to restore it to its former use, no inspector of prisons would be justified in sanctioning it. Another similar misappropiation exists in the case of Fort Elizabeth, at Cork, a build- ing originally occupied as a French prison, but now on the construction as a barrack for 180 men, although at the present day, hardly anyone would consider it good enough for a prison. Indeed, as a rule, military prisons and many provost establishments are planned and constructed on better sanitary principles than are most barracks. Another noteable example of bad adaptation is afforded by Stirling Castle, in which the old halls of the palace have been appropriated as barrack rooms by carrying galleries round the walls, so as to have two flats of beds, one on the floor and the other on the gallery; the result of the arrangement being that the heads of the men in bed in the galleries are above the tops of the windows, and, as there was no outlet for foul air from the top of the room, the only air which the occupants of the beds in the gallery had to breathe was the foul air from the soldiers who sleep on the lower tier of beds below. Barrack accommodation of the very worst description is obtained in this way, and the old halls of the palace are damaged. Even recent adaptations of buildings to barrack purposes are open to serious objec- tion. May Street recruiting barrack at Belfast, and Victoria Street barrack at Perth, afford illustrations of this remark. In the former case, a barrack for 50 men has been made out of a shop or factory, with windows on one side of it, which occupies one side of a narrow' enclosed court, having the privy, cesspit, and ashpit at one end of it; the whole being on the model of a badly constructed blind alley or court in the worst dis- tricts of towns. In the Perth example a manufactory has been converted into barracks, by simply putting bedsteads on the floors, while in all the other arrangements necessary for a bar- rack there is simply entire deficiency. Even the hospital is a place not fit to be occupied by people in health. It appears to us that these defects in the plan and structure of barracks all proceed from one cause, namely, that nobody seems to have considered what conditions are required for preserving the healthiness of a building, in which a number of adults must necessarily be massed together within a circumscribed space, and, consequently, no intel- ligent uniform plan of constructing barracks has been arrived at; no fundamental prin- ciples are recognized as absolutely necessary for health. Some barracks are better than others, and a few are good, so far as their general plan is concerned, but these are the fortunate exceptions wdiich prove the rule. In the open country, and with a population distributed over a considerable area, free external movement of the air neutralizes or dissipates many causes of disease, which otherwise would have a potent influence on health ; but this immunity has its limit. Whenever, even in the open country, the process of aggregation begins, and a number of human beings come to live and sleep in the same room, or under the same roof, the mere external movement of the atmosphere no longer affords the same immunity from disease. In built suburbs, or in the heart of densely peopled towns, where the external air itself is more or less impure, any stagnation, either within or without human dwellings, becomes hazardous to health. Hence the immense advantage gained in constructing all buildings to be occupied by numbers of people, and barracks as w7ell as others, in open and airy districts. Indeed, the gain to health, by a proper selection of site, is so great, that nothing short of well-established military requirements should be permitted to over- rule it. By a proper selection of site, the whole question of construction becomes sim- plified, for it insures the one paramount condition of health, a free, moving, outer atmosphere. But it is quite possible to neutralize, to a greater or less extent, this advantage by errors in plan, and hence if barracks are built in town districts where the external air is not only more or less impure, but the external ventilation always more or less obstructed by surrounding buildings, any error in plan which still further obstructs the external ventilation becomes a positive risk to health. The block plan of a barrack should therefore always be as simple as possible; the largest possible proportion of its surface should be exposed to the sun and to the action of prevailing winds ; the buildings should be so arranged that no one part shall interfere with the light and ventilation of another; there should be no closed courts, no deep closed angles, no iarge projections ; the latrines, urinals, ashpits, &c., should never be placed among the buildings, but away from them. The architect should from first to last con- sider, “ How can I make the best use of my ground to secure pure flowing air and sun- “ light over every part of my building ? ” If such questions were asked, nearly all the existing errors in plan would be avoided. T« secure these inestimable advantages as regards health, it is never necessary to sacri-