Report of Mr. Charles Watson on the works necessary for the proper and efficient ventilation of Hampstead Workhouse.

  • Watson, Charles.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of Mr. Charles Watson on the works necessary for the proper and efficient ventilation of Hampstead Workhouse. 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.

    4/16 (page 2)
    more rapidly in sick wards than in the wards of the able» bodied inmates. The water-closets, nurses' sinks, slops, the diseases of the inmates and other impurities and sources, pollute the air. All these impurities must be removed, and replaced by as much pure external air, the purest the locality can supply, without inconvenience and danger to the inmates from cold draughts of air, so as to make it almost an impossi- bility to detect by the sense of smell, or by the test of lime- water, the presence of any impurity. Whatever ventilating apparatus may be applied to your Workhouse should be adequate to secure these results. When these results are obtained, a ward that affords 300 or less, to 500 cubical feet to each inmate, can be made as healthy as if the inmates breathed in the open air, and much more healthy than where 1000 to 1500 cubical feet are supplied to each inmate where the ventilation is defective and inadequate to supply the thousands of pints of air hourly, as nature demands, to the inmates, and to withdraw the air as rapidly as it is made impure by breathing diseases and other causes. It is not imperative for the maintenance of health, and the restoration to health, to provide 1500 cubical feet of space in each ward of a workhouse or infirmary for each inmate to secure a continuous presence in the ward of an abundant supply of pure air. The ventilating appliances are defective when 1500 cubic feet are imperative. It is not necessary to have open doors and windows, which cause dangerous and uncomfortable cross draughts of air, and a waste of heat in winter, to secure thorough ventilation. The corridors and the wards should be of a uniform temper- ature throughout the entire buildings. This can be secured if the corridors are heated by hot water, or by steam passing through cast-iron pipes, or by other equally efficient modes of heating. The ascending heated air will pass into each ward through the fanlights now so properly applied to each ward. This arrangement will effect a great saving of coals in the wards, but would not necessarily dispense with the use of open fire-grates in any of the wards where found necessary. When the temperature is uniform throughout the buildings draughts of air are very gentle, or generally cease altogether. Doors and windows should be kept shut in winter, as, when open, they make it very difficult, if not impossible, to main- tain a uniform temperature throughout the house. When, at any time, the wind blows from the north and from the