Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board on the continued prevalence of diphtheria in the Aylesbury urban sanitary district.

  • Spear, John.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board on the continued prevalence of diphtheria in the Aylesbury urban sanitary district. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    private drains of this street are generally old. and of similar defective construction (unventilated and leaky); they were found to be carried beneath several of the infected houses; in three of the latter “ internal connexions ” were observed. The condition and construction of the sewer of Ripon Street and Whitehall Street, and the private drainage there, are, in essential respects, precisely similar. There also, amongst the group of infected houses, the escape of sewer air by private drains, &c., was complained of. The Castle Street sewer, of similar construction, was opened for my inspection and found to be nearly choked with foul deposit. Three children of different families, living at or near the lower end of this street, died in November of diphtheria. They were known to have played together about an untrapped gully communicating with this sewer, at a place before com¬ plained of as horribly offensive from sewage effluvia. A child living in a house higher up the street had, in the previous June, suffered from diphtheria, and the same sewer had had opportunities of specific infection during the epidemic of 1885-86 from its higher ramifications. The sewer into which the British Schools are drained was likewise opened for inspection. It was found to be of the same construction and half full of black deposit. In a house in Mill Street, Cambridge Street, a woman, aged about 50, suffered from an attack of diphtheria in November. Her husband was infected about three weeks later, but the other members of the family, grown up sons, escaped. The circumstances were such that exposure to direct infection appeared to be most improbable; but it was found that the woman was accustomed to work in a cellar kitchen, having direct communica¬ tion with the sewer, and much invaded by sewer air. A woman living at Parson’s Fee, who suffered from a fatal attack, was, it seemed probable, infected under similar circumstances in a house in Great Western Street—a street the sewerage of which has already been described. In St. John’s Road, Cambridge Street, three children of a family (one of them aged nine months) sickened of the disease within a day or two of each other. The drainage had been before the subject of complaint, and now, on examination, an open-jointed pipe drain was found to be carried through the house just beneath the flooring. Sewage matter had been escaping at all the open joints, and the foundations were spoken of as “ gutted ” with sewage. It is unnecessary for me to continue the relation of such cases. They might, if need be, be multiplied, but of themselves they afford a fair indication of the circumstances under which a large proportion of recent sufferers from diphtheria in Aylesbury were found to have been living. It is admissible now to complete the summary given at the end of Part I. of the Report, as follows :— 7. Endemic prevalence of diphtheria in Aylesbury co-exists with a condition of sewers and drains that is productive of excessive filth contamination of soil and air. Sanitary Administration. The Report of Dr. Gresswell, after the inquiry of 1886, dealt largely with Adminisi ra¬ the need for improvement in the sanitary administration of the district, and tion of the referred specially fo the following circumstances as injurious to the public author,ty- health:—The continued occupation of houses unfit for habitation; the accumulation of house refuse about dwellings; the defective construction and inadequate ventilation and flushing of many of the public sewers and private drains ; the want of proper surface paving and channelling of many streets and courts; the nuisances arising from the proximity to dwellings of ill-kept slaughter-houses. In regard to the means available for checking the spread of infectious disease, the report further stated that notification of such disease to the Medical Officer of Health was entirely without system; that hospital accommodation for the isolation of infectious cases was of a merely provisional character and unsatisfactory; and-that no public disinfecting apparatus or