Annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year 1956.

  • Bermondsey (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
[1957]
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year 1956. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/66 (page 7)
    W.C. accommodation but damp and dark, and with bad internal arrangements and many other defects which combined together to render them totally unfit for human habitation. Thus it was that, when the 1914-1918 war was over, the problem of housing the people engaged the earnest attention of the Council at once. It was at this time also that changes in the political complexion of the Council gave added impetus to the movement for improving housing conditions. The major part of the work, so far as housing was concerned, had fallen upon the Chief Sanitary Inspector who, at first, was given the additional title of Housing Manager; he was, however, subsequently designated Housing Director and put in charge of a Housing Department separated from the Public Health Department. Since that time, almost a hundred insanitary areas have been dealt with, most of them being small areas, of course, but all of them requiring each house to be individually inspected by the Medical Officer of Health and the District Sanitary Inspector, the necessary schedules to be prepared and, usually, the holding of a public enquiry by a Ministry Inspector. The representation of these areas remained, and still remains, a function of the Medical Officer of Health while the provision of new housing accommodation and the management thereof is allotted to the Housing Department. So far as building in this Borough is concerned, the new accommodation has, for obvious reasons, almost all been provided in flats; one experiment was made, however, chiefly under the impetus given by Dr. A. Salter, M.P., providing for the erection of cottages at the Garden Estate in Salisbury Street. Although I suppose most folk would prefer a house and a garden to a flat in which to bring up a family, considerations of space and population in this Borough render that alternative impossible. So it has come about here, as in other parts, that the physical appearance of the whole area has changed. Many problems have been encountered by the two departments but they have been solved during the years by good will and understanding. Standards have changed and have very much improved. It is only necessary to compare the block of flats known as Vine Lane Buildings, erected in 1884 by the London Labourers Dwelling Society Ltd., with, say, the Neckinger Estate or Pynfolds to note the tremendous improvement in design and amenity which has been achieved under the Housing Department. Included among the many problems still to be solved, however, is the dampness in some flats which is often attributed to condensation, perhaps not altogether reasonably. I think also that more attention should be given to management of property where the adequate maintenance is largely a question of personal care. It is for this reason that I have always insisted on the necessity of house to house inspection by the District Sanitary Inspectors who really are the only protection which the tenant has against a bad landlord, whether it be a private owner or a public authority. One other irritating difficulty which I have encountered in this Borough is the very confusing method of naming and of numbering flats. Following on the subject of housing, I cannot help remarking