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The Health of Barking
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES.
INTRODUCTION.
I do not think in writing about the environmental health services that I can
fail to direct special attention to the fact that the year 1948 is the centenary year
of the first Public Health Act. This Act provided for the establishment of a general
board of health for the whole country. In the same year there was passed a "Nuisance
Removal and Diseases Prevention Act," which gave supplementary powers and
applied to the whole of Great Britain. These two measures laid the foundations
of subsequent legislation and came as a climax to persistent agitation. When the
1848 Act was introduced, it was said that the bill was a "call for a national assault
against the abiding host of disease, the permanent overhanging mist of infection,
the annual slaughter doubling in its ravages our bloodiest fields of conflict."
It is interesting to quote from a description given in the Edinburgh Review of
1850 of the water used by the citizens of London:—
"The refuse and dirt from two millions of individuals, the enormous
accumulation of waste and dead animal and vegetable matter, the blood
and offal of slaughter-houses, the outpourings from gasworks, dyeworks,
breweries, distilleries, glueworks, tanneries, chemical and other works—
and a thousand nameless pollutions, all find their way into the Thames.
The mixture is next washed backwards and forwards by the tide and, having
been thoroughly stirred up and finally comminuted by the unceasing splash of
two hundred and ninety-eight steamboats, is then pumped up for the use of
the wealthiest city of the world."
It is right and proper that you should be reminded not only of the conditions
of the river, but also of the housing conditions which prevailed at that time, which
were equally deplorable.
There can be no doubt that the Public Health Act of 1848 was a turning
point in the social history of this country because it was at this time that sanitary
consciousness was first developed. From this has followed improved sanitary
conditions in home, school, factory, farm and office. Your services to-day, nevertheless,
still require an observant mind, personal initiative, understanding and
sympathy for the less fortunate.
Whilst we rejoice that great improvement has been made we cannot be
complacent so long as so many families are without a home of their own and so
many of the houses which were condemned ten years ago are still in use.
It has been calculated that the floor space needed for the use of every single
town dweller in these Islands is, in the house 250 square feet, in his place of work,
factory or office, 150 square feet and in other forms of public buildings 170 square
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