The dwelling house / by George Vivian Poore.

  • Poore G. V. (George Vivian), 1843-1904.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dwelling house / by George Vivian Poore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Nightingale Street, Edgware Eoad, where the density of population, according to Mr. Charles Booth, is over 300 persons to the acre. Other maps published by the Asylums Board show that whereas the air-borne contagium, diphtheria, was confined more or less to the crowded districts, enteric fever, which is a water-borne contagium, was evenly spread over the whole parish. It need hardly be said that the enforcement of vaccination, notification, and isolation, is important in pro- portion to the density of population. The working of the sanitary laws is a great expense to the ratepayers. I find it stated, for instance, in the report of the Asylums Board, that for the removal of the 2G0 small-pox patients from Marylebone the ambulances travelled nearly twenty miles for each patient, and collectively 5,200 miles, or about the distance from here to Bombay. Overcrowding is not cheap, and 1 find, by a reference to the report of St. Marylebone, that whereas in 1871 that parish, of a])out 1,500 acres, and with a diminishing population, could be ‘ run ’ for about GGOL a day, it now costs about 1,100/. per day. It is right to add that the parish has no control over a great part of the expenditure, but, nevertheless, 440/. per diem is a fair sum to place upon the shrine of progressive municipalism. If infectious disease occurs in our houses we have only to notify, and the parish does the rest. We have put a premium on fever, and the lucky man whose house is visited by a mild scarlatina is rewarded by having his family maintained for six weeks at the public expense, and his whitewashing done by the parish. If, on the return of a child from the hospital, another child catches the disease, he can recover damages. The Asylums Board is probably the most pauperising institution ever conceived, but we are such cowards in the