Dr Airy's draft report to the local government board on the sanitary state of the Clitheroe rural sanitary district.

  • Airy, Hubert.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr Airy's draft report to the local government board on the sanitary state of the Clitheroe rural sanitary district. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    on the Sanitary State of the Clitheroe Rural Sanitary District. George Buchanan, Medical Department, December 7tli, 1880. Inspection of tliis district was ordered by the Board on account of excessive prevalence of diphtheria in the Chipping sub-district of the Clitheroe Union during the winter of 1879-80. The inspection at first had regard only to the epidemic immediately in question, which was reported on in connection with other diphtheria outbreaks. It subsequently appeared desirable to make further inquiry as to the general sanitary condition of the district. The Clitheroe Union occupies the middle portion of the wide valley of the Kibble, with its western tributary the Hodder, and lies partly in Lancashire and partly in Yorkshire. Towards the south-east the boundary includes the range of hills which rise to a height of 1,831 feet in the Pendle Hill, and to the north-west the district extends to the fells which form the water-shed between the tributaries of the Hodder and those of the Wyre and the Lune. In the middle of the district, in the angle between the valleys of the Kibble and the Hodder, rises a group of moors called the Harrop and Newton Fells, in which are extensive quarries of good building stone. Limestone is quarried in some places. The soil is poor, and the land is almost entirely given up to grazing. Looking over the Hodder Valley from the Harrop Fell, not a corn- field is to be seen; all is green pasture. In the south-eastern part of the district, in the neighbourhood of Clitheroe, at Chatburn, Barrow, and Sabden, there are cotton mills, and at Chipping there are some small ironworks. The bulk of the population is occupied on the grazing farms. The township of Clitheroe, with a population of 8,208 inhabitants, forms an urban sanitary district in the midst of the rural. It is entirely comprised in the Clitheroe sub-district, of which the population in 1871 was 10,980. leaving 2,772 to the rural district. The four remaining sub-districts of Gisburn, 2,220; Slaidburn, 1,959 ; Chipping, 3,301 ; and Whalley, 2,621; be- long exclusively to the rural district, giving it an aggregate population of 12,873. The number of acres is 116,851, an average of one inhabitant to every nine acres. The estimate of the present population of these sub-districts is necessarily uncertain. The quarterly returns of births would seem to show that in the Gisburn sub-district the population, which had diminished between 1861 and 1871, has increased since 1874. On the other hand, the population of the Slaidburn sub-district, which had increased previous to 1871, appears to have diminished since then, as also has that of the Chipping sub-district. In the Clitheroe sub-district the numbers have evidently increased, as they had done in the previous decennium ; while in the Whalley sub-district the births appear to indicate that the population has remained nearly stationary, perhaps increasing in the last two years. Taking these facts into considera- tion, and adopting a birth-rate of 36 per 1,000 in the Clitheroe sub-district, and one of 30 per 1,000 in all the rest, I estimate the population in 1879 to have been, in the Gisburn sub-district, 2,600; Slaidburn, 1,600 ; Chipping, 2,700 ; Clitheroe, 12,200 ; Whalley, 2,800. In accordance with the above calculation, I estimate the death-rates in tlie several sub-districts for the ten years 1870-9, as follows :—