Catalogue description Folios 26-41. To: The General Board of Health. From: Alfred L Dickens, Superintending...

Folios 26-41.

To: The General Board of Health.

From: Alfred L Dickens, Superintending Inspector, Manchester [Lancashire].

Report upon the sanitary condition of the town of Glossop [Derbyshire]. Dickens reports that he 'cannot too earnestly call the attention of those interested in the district, to the present dangerous state of a large portion of the town of Glossop and the adjoining township'. He explains that 'the cesspool system is in full force', and to an extent, 'as regards offensiveness', that he has 'rarely seen equalled'. At the back of six 'decent cottages, moderately well kept', and belonging to a Butcher, Dickens states that he found an open cesspool 'filled with refuse of a very foul description, in which are floating heaps of corruption'. Among the 'putrefying masses' Dickens counted 'no less that five bodies', which he was informed by the Butcher's wife, were those of lambs that her husband had recently slaughtered; 'I need not say that the stench arising from this execrable nuisance was most sickening'. 'Fever' was found to have prevailed, 'or was actually prevailing', in the majority of the places visited by Dickens during his investigation at Glossop. In one house he visited he states that he found a child 'stricken with fever', for whom 'no Doctor had been sent for'. Upon inquiry as to what medicine had been given to the child, the answer was said to be 'whiskey'. Dickens notes that, 'generally speaking, the ventilation within the houses, more especially in the bed rooms, is very imperfect, and this fact with overcrowding in these apartments cannot fail to assist the spread of such a disease, or that which has recently proved so fatal in Glossop'. He adds that 'nearly 80 deaths had occurred from scarlatina since the 1 January to 30 April'. Dickens remarks that the Nuisances Removal Act 'appears to have been a dead letter in the district' and that he gathers 'that there is a feeling amongst many in Glossop that the Public Health Act 1848 is very costly in its working'. This, he states, 'is a great error', adding that he has little hesitation in saying that he believes that the present amount paid for the occurrence of preventable disease 'would go far towards paying for moderate improvements in the district'. Dickens adds that 'it is now a recorded fact that where sanitary works under the Public Health Act have been judiciously carried out, the death rate has been lowered and the Poor Rate reduced'.

[Folio 26 is a Place Guard: Glossop].