The differences between the statutes bearing on public health for England and Ireland / by E.D. Mapother.

  • Edward Mapother
Date:
[1864]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The differences between the statutes bearing on public health for England and Ireland / by E.D. Mapother. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    two qualified medical practitioners shall certify to the local autho- rity that any house so overcrowded as to bo dangerous or preju- dicial to the health of the inhabitants, and the inhabitants shall consist of more than one family, the local authority shall cause proceedings to be taken before the justices to abate such over- crowding, and the justices shall thereupon make such order as they may think fit, and the person permitting such over-crowding shall forfeit a sum not exceeding forty shillings.” In London the magis- trates adjudge all rooms to be overcrowded which do not allow 500 cubic feet for each adult, and 300 for each child. It would be better to have this proportion defined as it is in the General Police and Improvement (Scotland) Act, 1862, in which, however, the allowance is not sufficiently liberal, for it declares that each person over eight years shall have 300 cubic feet of space, and rmder that age 130, and that no room having less than 700 cubic feet in space shall be the exclusive dwelling of one family. There are hundreds of dwellings recorded in our “ Sanitary Eegis- ter ” at the City Hall as having developed fever and other cantogious diseases, in which over-crowding exists to the utmost, and yet no amendment is possible under any act the legislature has thought of conferring on us. As there are, therefore, no powers in this city by which I could demonstrate the marvellous effect of thinning inhabi- tants in the prevention of typhus, I borrow an instance from Dr. Gairdner, the Medical Officer of Health for Glasgow. The house No. 83, Drygate-street, aptly termed “the Eookery,” consisted of 48 separate tenements, with an average of 4 persons to each room, each individual having 126 cubic feet of space, or one-fourth of the mini- mum space allowed for each soldier according to the Barracks Com- mission, In this building 39 cases of typhus had arisen during the year ending June 30th, 1863. Under the Police Act the tenements were thinned, and although fever in the city had doubled, and was prevalent in the very street, but one case occurred in the Eookery during the succeeding year. If this act should be extended to Ireland, I trust the sentence requiring the house to be occupied by more than one family will be omitted, for it excludes from any amendment many wretched cabins and stables (for even such places are converted to the purpose of human habitation), and which are greatly over-crowded. Any per- son who will visit Ball’s-yard (a closed court off IMeath-street), will find several houses consistiug of a single room, of about 1,200 cubic feet in space, thronged with six, seven, or even eight human beings, and sueh dwellings are, moreover, not touched by the Common Lodging House Acts. I would not advocate any measure for the removal of the poor from their over-crowded rooms, had I not the satisfaction of an- nouncing that dwellings will be shortly oifered to them by the “Dublin Artizans’ Improved Dwellings’ Company, Limited,”wliicli has been founded under most favourable aus})ices, and I trust that property owners will endeavour to provide decent dwellings for such of the poor as may be dispossessed in the construction of the
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