[Report 1927] / Medical Officer of Health, Wakefield City.

  • Wakefield (England). City Council.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

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

Credit: [Report 1927] / Medical Officer of Health, Wakefield City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    such treatment. In my last report I recommended the provision of special types of houses for young married couples and for the aged, and the Corporation has under consideration plans prepared by the Housing Architect for a group of houses suitable for the latter class. By the end of the year the clearance of the Pincheon Street and Volunteer Yard Insanitary Areas was practically completed, and I suggest that the Corporation should now take into consider¬ ation the question of improvement schemes for other insanitary areas in the City. During 1927 a start was made with the closure and demolition of individual insanitary houses, but only in a tentative manner, for we realised that the re-housing of the dispossessed tenants would prove a difficult matter. The 315 houses inspected under the Housing Regulations were mostly of a poor class, but were not situated in any of the scheduled insanitary areas. It is not surprising to find that a large proportion of them presented defects, and of these dampness, defective lighting and defective ventilation were the most serious. 40 per cent, were damp, 25 per cent, were dilapidated, 25 per cent, were inadequately ventilated, and 12 per cent, were inadequately lighted. Dampness in dwelling houses is receiving increased attention owing to its alleged casual association with rheumatism, and from special inquiries made during the year, there is a con¬ siderable body of local evidence supporting this view. Several of the houses dealt with during the year might fittingly be called “rheumatism houses” from the considerable number of cases which have occurred in them over a period of years. The danger to health from such houses may be realised when we find that out of 2,688 houses inspected under the Housing Regulations during the past 6 years, no few’^er than 990 or 37 per cent, were reported as damp. It is regrettable that the number of houses inspected under the Regulations was only 315, which is only about half the number that used to be inspected annually, and having regard to the housing conditions of the City, is quite insufficient to provide proper sanitary supervision. The decrease in the amount of housing inspection is to be explained mainly by the additional time now taken up by the Meat Inspection Regulations. When these Regulations came into force in 1925, no addition was made to the inspectorial staff, although experience has shewn that the due execution of the new duties would itself take up the time of one inspector. Since then other additional duties have been imposed on the inspectors, and I suggest that the time has now arrived when the appointment of an additional sanitary inspector is a necessity, if housing and general inspection work is to be done adequately.