Page 25 - Smallwood Hospital

Smallwood Hospital Redditch Heritage

great classes of conditions to which the causation of Phthisis may be put down’. One was the
general unsanitary condition of drainage and houses, tending to lower resistance to disease.
The other was related to needle pointing. Statistics concerning phthisis and needle pointing
were noted in The British Medical Journal: 56

Dr. Page, of Redditch, has most kindly copied from the registers the number of deaths assigned
to phthisis. During four of the years quoted - 1876, 1877, 1878, and 1879 - he acted as medical
officer of health, and I have selected the returns of those years for calculating the ratio to the
population living. The outcome is that, in every 1,000 living, the deaths from phthisis were in
each year respectively 2.34, 2.84, 2.17 and 2.16. Again, its ratio to the total mortality stands for
the same years respectively at 12.16, 15.58, 11.24, and 9.63. .... Just as happens with the
Sheffield grinding, the introduction of youths, especially when not robust, to needle-pointing
shops is fraught with speedy breaking down of health and early death if the occupation be
persisted in.

In Page’s annual report for 1875 he also noted that the practice of filing in workers’ homes,
with no provision for the removal of the dust, injured ‘not only the operator but the whole
family’.

Public health legislation 1848 and 1858

The 1848 Public Health Act

A General Board of Health was set up, which reported to Parliament. Local authorities
were empowered to set up local boards of health which managed sewers and drains, wells
and slaughterhouses, refuse and sewerage systems, burial grounds and public baths,
recreation areas and public parks. Local boards of health could finance projects by levying
local rates. However, this Act was only permissive.

The 1858 Local Government Act and the 1858 Public Health Act

The Public Health Act of 1858 abolished the General Board of Health and transferred its
medical duties to the Privy Council. The Privy Council medical department carried out the
relevant inspections where public health projects were involved.

The Local Government Act of 1858 came into force in all existing local board of health
districts on 1 September 1858. The act made some changes to the procedure for constituting a
local board and gave them some additional powers. The authorities created by the 1858 act
were simply entitled ‘Local Boards’ and their areas as ‘Local Government Districts’.

The procedure for adopting the act and constituting a local board included improvement
commissioners who could adopt the Act for their district, the board of commissioners
becoming in addition the local board. Petitions from ten per cent of the ratepayers of places,

56
The British Medical Journal, April 6 1889.

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