The report of the Commission apjointed by the Ministry of Health to nguire into the typhoid outbreak at Croydon reveals a state of things} which one hopes. but with little eon-Adence, docs not exist in other boroughs. As "The Times" says, in tone of the severest leaders one can emall, it was Not so much the system that was at full ax that there was no system, The Commission was appointed in the larier part of November, when already 72 cases of typhoid and six Geaths had been notified. The epifdemie numbered 310 cases and 43} oaths before it was ended.
The cause was fairly early traced] fo the Addington Well, one of seve supplying a large area in Croydon, which since Octuber had been undergoing structural alterations. During peri of this time water from the well was being pumped into the Croydon tains unfiltered and unchlorinated. Ard one of the men working on the well Was found to be an unknowing corrier of the typhoid bacinus.
The men at the well were not reular waterworks men, but volunteers recruited mostly from sewer workers. The Commission records that seven of them did not look any too healthy. and" particularly not the typhoid miles north of Great Yarmouth, for, Tength of 600 yds. and flooded hundreds of acres of fertile ground. Horsey itself was transformed into an island, many farmhouses were sunk in water halfway up the ground fo Engineer's, was never informed of the work at Addington Well, Neither Dr. Holden nor the Borough Engineer, though water was one of the latter's responsibilities, knew that the well water was going into the mains "unfiltered and unchlorinated.
The Assistant. Water Engineer seems to have under-estimated the importance of chlorination and did not toll his chief for some days that it was not being used.
There appends to. have been a cum= plete want of ce-ordination bet the oMfiees concerned.
The Commission found that the Borough Engineer has far too many duties, roads, lighting, drainoye, water supply. Dr. Holden is hard-working, efficient and conscientious: only the Commission think that he might have been quicker to appreciate that water was the cause of the trouble.
In fact it was a private citizen of Croydon who first suggested to the Borough Engineer that "the only common thing (among the typhoid cases notifed) appears to be water.'
Altogether a deplorable report TeaMe Accident Statistics Without in the least underestimate {ing the importance of the tremendous publicity given to the Croydon out" break, one cannot but notice the re-Iotive unimportance attached to trafic deaths and injuries.
It so happened that the monthly returns of these were published on the same day as the Typhoid Com: mission's report. The only apparent fnlerest in them for most papers is that the number of deaths on the road in January was exactly the some as int January 1087, That number was 581, say 118 a week, about seventeen a day.
Some papers. however, nolo with complacency that the number of Jared, with ough over 1,000 more tha: in December, was 3.280 fewer than fu January 1987. In fact _no more than 15179, a trifle of 486 and a unal daily maimed on the roads.
There i" no publi: conscience woof the toil of the roads. If a suburban rain bumps into the platform burs at Liverzool Street and half-aedozen 'amice-workers are bruised, It Isa story with double-column heading for all the evening papers. But six or 7.000 deaths on the rond annually are searcely noticed, Perhaps this is of Nature's methods congestion in our county,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.