[Report 1934] / Medical Officer of Health, Dundee City.

  • Dundee (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1934] / Medical Officer of Health, Dundee City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/280 (page 17)
    It is, perhaps, a disappointment to find that in introducing new housing legislation at this time the Government has not seized the opportunity to consolidate in a single code all the existing Acts dealing with slum clearance and overcrowding and earn the bless- ing of the non-legal administrator who at present has to grope his way through a maze of repealed and amended sections in previous Acts. In May, 1934, the Council, as trustees of the Fleming Trust, appointed a nurse inspectress, in terms of the Declaration of Trust, to inspect the houses in the Fleming Scheme and their sur- roundings. This is the first occasion on which, a routine inspec- tion of slum clearance houses has been carried out in Dundee, although in certain other cities it has been a regular feature for some years, and the results are therefore of particular interest. The appointment was, for the time being at least, a temporary one, and it was arranged that the nurse should carry out her duties under the direction of the Medical Officer of Health, her reports being passed on periodically to the City Factor. There are in the Scheme 496 houses, but one of these is occu- pied by a caretaker, so tha^ 495 initial inspections were entailed. In addition, further visits to the number of 367 were paid where these were found necessary, the whole procedure occupying about three months. After inspection each house was placed in one of four categories, according to the general degree of cleanliness, and the number placed in each, group is shown below:— Clean Fair Unsatisfactory Dirty Total 3J3 149 25 8 495 (63%) (30%) (5%) (2%) The following extracts from Nurse Ferguson’s final report explain this classification in detail and show what improvements she was able to obtain by kindly criticism and advice:— “ Clean House.—A house before it was placed in this cate- gory had to be of a very high standard of cleanliness. I found, almost without exception, that a tenant of a clean house was clean even in detail. The houses in most cases were well furnished, the walls artistically papered or distempered, the windows clean and draped with curtains chosen to match the predominating colour of the walls. The floors were either well scrubbed or polished and the woodwork in the kitchenette well scrubbed. Sink, boiler,