SANITARY INSPECTION OF THE PORT OF LONDON.
We move easily in the little beaten track of our own concerns, and do not think of the care that is taken of us. What snug citizen of us all ever imagines danger to himself and the community from such a source as the port of London? Nevertheless, if the matter be given a moment’s consideration, it must be allowed that danger threatens there of a very real kind. Our great port swarms all the year round with vessels of every nationality. They come with human and other freight from this country and that, from ports maybe in which disease of one sort or another was rife when they sailed; they carry the germs of many a deadly malady in cabin or in hold; disease often ripens on the voyage amongst passengers or crew, and is carried right up to the port itself; and the vessels, on their arrival here, lie a day, a week, a month in our docks. What, if any, precautions are taken, and by whom, to prevent the diseases that are thus borne so near to us, from spreading through the port, and from the port through the wide area of London itself? The thing is worth looking into for a moment.[1]
There is no better known craft in all the Port of London than the Hygeia. She is the little steam-launch used by the medical officer of the port when, accompanied by his inspector, he goes up and down the river on his sanitary rounds. The inspector inspects, and the medical officer receives the report and gives instructions. Through the kindness of the medical officer (Dr Collingridge), I was enabled, a few days ago, to accompany him on board his fast-going and comely little craft. The purpose I had in going will be better understood if I explain first what are the functions of the port medical officer. He acts under the corporation of London, who for ten years or more have been the sanitary authority for this vast and teeming port. The custom-house has sanitary powers of a kind, but they are little better than nominal. The duty of discovering an infected ship rests upon them, but having done that, their responsibility is almost at an end. For example, every vessel arriving at the port of London from a foreign port is bound, on reaching the quarantine ground at Gravesend, to signal, for the information of the boarding officer. This officer at once visits the vessel, and interrogates the master as to the health of the crew and passengers. If all questions be answered in a satisfactory manner, the vessel is allowed ‘free pratique,’ and the quarantine certificate is issued, without which no vessel is allowed to report. If there has been any sickness of an infectious or contagious character, the vessel is examined by the Customs medical officer, who, if he find infectious cases on board, communicates with the medical officer of the ship-hospital at Greenwich. But the arrangements in force at this moment for preventing the importation of disease into the port of London are exceedingly defective, insomuch as—unless the disease be cholera, plague, or yellow fever—there exists no power by which an infected vessel can be detained at the entrance to the port. Unless, therefore, the hospital officer—who acts in concert with the port medical officer—arrive immediately, a vessel containing infectious disease is allowed to pass up the river with her cases on board, and it is not until her arrival in dock that the patients are able to be removed by the medical officer of the port. But this weak point in the system is now in train to be wholly remedied, for the corporation have within the last few weeks framed a regulation by which no vessel with any contagious or infectious disease on board will be allowed to pass into port until the cases have been removed and the vessel thoroughly cleansed and fumigated.
A notion may be gathered from the foregoing of the functions of the port medical officer. He derives his authority from the Port of London Sanitary Committee of the corporation, a main part of whose business it is to prevent the importation of epidemics into London by means of the vessels which arrive daily in the port from all quarters of the globe. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the extreme importance of their functions; but let me endeavour to show these by one or two picked examples, and then—for the Hygeia has her steam up, and the fog is rising rapidly—we shall be off on our tour of inspection. In the latter part of the summer of 1882, a very serious epidemic of smallpox occurred at the Cape of Good Hope. What has smallpox in South Africa to do with us in London? A good deal, considering that the shipping which arrives here from that colony is enormous. The disease spread, the death-rate rose, and our port medical officer was very properly alarmed. He at once set to work to take all due precautions, and by his orders, rigid note was had of every vessel arriving from the Cape. Beyond this, a circular letter was addressed to the principal Companies and shipowners engaged in that trade, calling attention to the disease, and asking for immediate notice in the event of its breaking out on board any vessel. It turned out that very few vessels carried the disease; but, thanks to the precautionary measures that had been taken, such cases as did arrive in the port were promptly discovered and dealt with. At another time Boulogne was attacked by the same disease, and as this is a port within nine or ten hours’ voyage of London, and steamers arrive almost daily, the matter was of great importance to the port sanitary authorities of London. The medical officer himself visited Boulogne, to inquire into the causes and extent of the disease; and in the port an inspector was told off to examine each vessel on its arrival; while the General Steam Navigation Company were advised to order the revaccination of all officers and crews on vessels running to Boulogne. The recent outbreak of cholera in Egypt occasioned no small anxiety to the Port Sanitary Committee, and it was owing in part no doubt to the vigilance of the medical officer and his assistants that not a single case of the malady appeared in this port. To the crew of every infected ship, or of any ship arriving from an infected port, the medical officer offers vaccination free of cost. These are some amongst the precautions that are taken to protect the citizens of London against the importation of infectious diseases from foreign ports. Not a vessel that enters the port of London, great or small, or of any nationality, escapes inspection. There are two inspectors for the river, one of whom, in the Hygeia, and the other in a rowing-boat, goes through and through the port every day of the week; and two for the docks, the whole of which—miles in extent—undergo a careful daily inspection. I forget how many thousands of vessels the medical officer told me were overhauled in this way in the course of a year—British, American, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Austrian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Swedish, and Norwegian. Cases of infection are received at present on the hospital-ship at Greenwich; but a land-hospital has just been opened there, an improvement on the floating establishment for which the medical officer has long been anxiously waiting. A ship-hospital, he says, is useful enough for one class of infectious disease; but he holds that it is impossible effectually to isolate more than one class in the same vessel; and in addition to this grave disadvantage, there is the danger to the vessel herself, an illustration of which was afforded one rough night lately, when the hospital-ship Rhin broke from her moorings and went pitching down the river.
But let us see how the work of inspection is done. We are aboard our pretty little launch, which has been steaming impatiently this half-hour past. The master is at the wheel, the ‘boy’ is lively with the ropes, and the inspector has his note-book ready. The medical officer descends to the cosy little cabin; and when he has changed his silk hat for the regulation blue cloth cap, and bestowed his umbrella where no nautical eye may see it, he produces a cigar-case, and observes casually, that should stress of weather confine us below, the locker is not wholly destitute of comforts. That all may know what we are and what our business is, we fly in the bows, or the stern—I speak as a landsman—a small blue flag, whereon is inscribed in white letters, ‘Port Medical Officer.’
We are not going to make the tour of the whole port, which at our necessarily moderate rate of speed—though the Hygeia can do her twelve knots an hour and race any craft on the river—would be something like a day’s voyage; for the area over which the Port Sanitary Committee has control is a wide one, embracing the whole river from Teddington Lock to Gravesend, and from below Gravesend to Trinity High Water. We are to run through the region known as the Pool, which, commencing below London Bridge, ends somewhere about the West India Docks. It is now half-past ten o’clock, and the river is all astir with its own picturesque and varied life. The rising breeze has scattered the mist, and fretted the surface of the water, which dances around us in a thousand crested wavelets. The sun has struggled through a mass of slate-coloured clouds, and plays over the wonderful towers and steeples of the City churches, and lights up the gray old wharfs along the river, and pierces the deep holds of vessels discharging their cargoes.
In making his ordinary round, the inspector works steadily up or down the river, going from vessel to vessel, until all have been examined. But as I am anxious not only to see the routine of inspection, but to get some notion besides of the variety of the craft lying in the Pool, the medical officer kindly proposes to make a selection of typical vessels. Steering out of the course of a fine Thames barge, just bearing down on us with all sail set, and fit as she moves to be transferred to the vivid canvas of Miss Clara Montalba, we stop alongside a Dutch eel-boat. The inspector has already intimated that the work of inspection here will be little more than a form. He never has any trouble with the Dutch eel-boats, for the crew appear to spend the major part of their existence in scrubbing, scouring, and polishing their neat little craft. The skipper salutes us in very passable English, and invites us aboard. We go from stem to stern, above and below; and I confess my inability to discover a single speck of dirt. These are trim and sturdy little boats, strongly and even handsomely built, and able to stand a good deal of weather. With a fair wind they make the passage in one or two days, but are sometimes delayed a fortnight or three weeks between Holland and the Thames. We steer next for one of the General Steam Navigation Company’s continental steamships, with the blue boats hanging in the davits. Here the inspector discovers a small sanitary defect in the neighbourhood of the forecastle, and a promise is given that it shall be remedied without delay. I am much struck by the genial and kindly style of the inspector. He has the suaviter in modo in perfection. It is never ‘Do this’ or ‘Look to that,’ but, ‘If I were you now, I think I’d,’ &c.; which goes far to account for the evident good feeling with which he is everywhere received. He can afford, however, to go about his business in a courteous spirit, for he rests upon the strong arm of the law. We board next a Thames sailing-barge. These vessels carry a miscellaneous cargo of grain, bricks, manure, cement, &c., from below London Bridge up the Medway. They are for the most part handsome and well-kept ships. There is no prettier sight on the river than a fleet of Thames barges sailing into port on a sunny summer’s day, laden high with hay or straw. The inspector puts the usual questions; ‘How many have you aboard? How’s the health of the crew?’ and so on; and then we take a look round. Both the medical officer and the inspector have a keen eye to the water-casks, and to the cabin where the crew have their bunks or hammocks. The mate has the pick of the berths; the men come next; and the ‘boy’ takes his chance in a hole, where, if he be pretty well fagged out by the time he turns in, he may not impossibly manage to get his forty winks. In the matter of crew, by the way, these Thames barges are generally short-handed, and a bad time they have of it in dirty weather, when all hands are needed for the sails, and the helm and everything else has to be abandoned. It is small wonder that so many of them are lost.
Our next visit is to one of the splendid Dundee passenger boats. No chance of fault-finding here, where everything is spick-and-span throughout. These are very fast boats, and their fittings are fine enough for a yacht. The chairs in the saloon are velvet, the fireplace a picture in itself, and the pantry glistens with silver-plate. As we go down below, the captain suggests refreshments; but the medical officer, fully alive to the force of example, makes a modest reply to the effect that the day is not yet far spent. We board then a Guernsey sailing-boat, discharging a cargo of granite. The mate is nursing a wounded hand, crushed the day before in attending to a crank; and the medical officer tenders a bit of professional advice, for which he receives no fee. The crew’s quarters in the forecastle have a decidedly close smell, and the inspector thinks that a little lime-washing would not be amiss. We go on to visit a ‘monkey’-barge, the craft which sails the unromantic waters of the canal. Cleanliness abounds here—the master, in fact, is polishing his candlestick when we arrive; but he receives a reprimand from the inspector for not having his papers on board. In this way the work of inspection is performed. It is lightly and easily done, to such perfection has the system been brought; and thanks to the extreme care with which it has been carried out for years past, and to the readiness with which masters and owners have complied with the instructions of the medical officer, it is now often in nine cases out of ten almost entirely formal. To see the really big vessels, we must go farther down the river; but we have learned something in the Pool as to the manner in which the sanitary work is conducted amongst the craft of every description.
We are now at the Shadwell entrance to the London Docks. Limehouse is on one side of us, and Rotherhithe on the other. It is a charming bit of the river, for those with an eye for quaint water-side scenery, as one of Mr Whistler’s early canvases abundantly testifies. The gray steeple of Limehouse church is to the left; nearer to hand, the red house of the harbour-master stands out brightly; ancient weather-smitten wharfs are on either side; queer old tenements with projecting stories, and coloured white, brown, and black, elbow one another almost into the water; and behind us rise the countless masts and delicate rigging of the vessels lying in the dock. The sun has gained full power now, and burnishes the restless surface of the river as I take leave of my courteous friends.