General report on the sanitary condition of the town of Kelso / drawn up at the request of the Board of Commissioners of Police, by Charles Wilson, M.D.

Wilson, Charles, 1804-1883

Date:: 1848

Credit: General report on the sanitary condition of the town of Kelso / drawn up at the request of the Board of Commissioners of Police, by Charles Wilson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$liad the time of my scrutiny been during the moist heats of autltmn, it would have been necessary to have given a still more unfavourable description of many of the localities. Those who lived in the vici- nity of some of the grosser nuisances complained to me vividly of the annoyance which they endured from them during the warmer seasons, and at those inter\Mls when the putrid masses were tempo- rarily disturbed while carrying them away as manure. A fruitful cause of the introduction of disease into a community, [^^^^^ing is the existence of common lodging-houses, open for the reception ' of those wanderers Avho are continually moving from place to place, with every aim but that of honest industry. I have examined, as part of my enquiry, into the economy of these establishments as they exist in Kelso, and find them well entitled to the designation, ordi- narily bestowed upon them in other towns and cities, of hot-beds of infection. Indeed, were it not that the visits of those who resort to them are usually of a very transitory description, the facilities which they, might afford to the production and dissemination of disease would constitute them nuisances of the most alarming and J fatal description. Individuals, prone, from the habits of a life of | mixed poverty and intemperance, to the incursions of epidemic I disorders, are crowded in these places to the number of 15 or 16, or even more, in a single apartment, with frequently three or four in a single bed. In one of them I computed, that, when the apartment was occupied to not a very extraordinary extent, the quantity of space allowed to each individual was somewhat under 70 cubic feet. , In another, a garret with a single window, the beds in which were mere pallets on the floor, the space for each occupant must havo been occasionally limited to 75 cubic feet. In a third, the allowance for each appeared to have risen as high as 95 feet; but the window was represented by a single aperture, not exceeding 2 feet square, looking out on a dead wall about 18 inches distant. An outer door of this establishment, opening into a foul area (14, Class A.) was hanging in fragments, its pannels partly filled with tattered canvass. | A fourth establishment, on a greater scale than the rest, usually I makes up IG beds; and, in seasons of extraordinary vagrancy, five / can be added in a dingy garret, making a total of twenty-one. Here, / also, three, and even four, occasionally sleep in a bed; and one of] the apartments, when occupied to the fullest extent, would afford/ only about 60 cubic feet to each of the inmates. When we consider,! that every adult individual requires daily from 600 to 700 cubic feet of pure air for the sustenance of life, and that the mere accu^ mulation of animal emanations is, in itself, highly prejudicial, we see at once to vvhat depressing and vitiating influences the occu- pants of such apartments must be frequently, if not habitually, sub- jected ; and that, were it not for a certain extent of ventilation, and a renewal of air, however scanty, life itself must terminate in a$