Dr. R.J. Reece's report to the Local Government Board on the general sanitary circumstances and administration of the urban district of Aldershot, with special reference to the prevalence of fatal diphtheria therein.

  • Reece, Richard J.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. R.J. Reece's report to the Local Government Board on the general sanitary circumstances and administration of the urban district of Aldershot, with special reference to the prevalence of fatal diphtheria therein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have their back gardens separated from one another by open wooden palings, which allow of a greater freedom of circulation of air than would be the case if two gardens were contained by brick walls. The condition of the back-yards will be referred to again under the heading 11 24. Keeping of Animals.” 16. Common Lodging Houses.— There are nine common lodging houses on the register. They vary very considerably as to their cleanliness, and as to the provision of sanitary requirements. Certain of them are extremely neat and well kept. There are, howrever, instances where washing accommodation for the lodgers can scarcely be said to exist ; others where the cubic space allotted to each bed falls far below 300 feet. Notices, which should be displayed, showing the number of lodgers the room was licensed to accommodate, are often absent, and, if present ,illegible ; beds are now and again in excess of the number for which the room was licensed ; floors are unscrubbed and dirty ; dust is thick on window-sills, showing the windows have been kept unopened for considerable periods ; fireplaces are boarded up, and partitions between the beds of married couples do not screen the whole of the bedsteads, nor reach to within six inches of the floor. In other words, the byelaws regulating the keeping of common lodging houses are flagrantly violated. 17. Houses let in lodgings.—There are rows of large houses, i.e., houses of more than two stories, built in the early days of Aldershot, which are now let in lodgings each of one or two rooms, to a plurality of families. The sub-letting of such houses is a special feature, peculiar to the district. It would seem desirable that such tenement houses should be regulated by byelaws. 18. Overcrowding. — Overcrowding of persons in houses is not often brought to the notice of the District Council. It is said that such overcrowd¬ ing, if it exist, is difficult of detection. Still, there can be no question that at times overcrowding must exist in certain localities, and attention should be directed to this matter with a view to regulating “ tenement ” houses by special byelaws. 19. Footpaths and byeways.—There are many footpaths, and byeways, giving access to back-yards in Aldershot. As a general rule they are unpaved, undrained, and in wret weather sloppy and generally unclean. Such footpaths should receive the special attention of the District Council. 20. Isolation Hospital Accommodation.—With the exception of a galvanised iron hut erected on a brick foundation at the Sewage Farm, and hurriedly put up to receive a case of small-pox, the Urban District Council were until quite recently without isolation hospital provision. The iron hut has been of late occupied as a residence by a man employed on the Sewage Farm. In March, 1898, the Urban District Council purchased, for the purpose of building thereon an Isolation Hospital, a piece of land three acres in extent, along with a right of way to it from Cemetery Road twenty feet wide. The land adjoins the cemetery towards the North Town portion of the district. The surface of the site is fairly even, and there is a gentle slope to the north. The subsoil is sandy, and it is not anticipated that it will be necessary to underdrain the land in question. It is surrounded by a quickset hedge on two sides, the 6 feet brick wall of the cemetery forms a third boundary, and the garden hedges and palings of a row of small houses close it in on the fourth side. A main drain has been laid to join the public sewer of the district, and the gas and water mains have been carried on to the site. On this piece of land there has been erected an Administration Block, which has been so arranged that patients can be received and treated therein while the hospital ward pavilions are being built. A building and apparatus lor disinfection, after the pattern of Washington Lyon, with separate chambers for the infected and disinfected articles, have been provided. A ward pavilion, separated into two wards of four beds each, with a nurse’s sitting-room between them, is in course of erection. These buildings are of brick.
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