In January, 1890, one of the Committees submitted a report to the Board, on which the resolution was passed—
“That the Committee be authorised to thoroughly examine the whole of the drainage of any school of the Board where they may think it necessary,” &c.
The drainage was subsequently examined. In 181 schools the drainage was all right. In 292 of the schools re-drainage was required. For how long that fertile source of disease had been scattering its evil germs among the tens of thousands of children attending these insanitary schools, no information is available.
In 1890, just twenty years after its formation, the Board appointed a Medical Officer, and he gave only a portion of his time to the work.
“Before 1891 there was no attempt on the part of the Board to prevent the spread of infectious diseases by precautionary measures being adopted in the school.”[187]
In 1895 the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:—
“School teachers should be required to inform the Sanitary Authority of any special amount of illness which may occur among the scholars. Half a school may be away through sickness if the disease be not a notified one, but no information of such fact comes to the Sanitary Authority.”
And in 1896 he wrote:—
“The past year had emphasised the need of definite instructions to school teachers to keep the Medical Officers of Health informed of the existence of infectious disease among their pupils. It is surmised that there were upwards of 2,000 cases of measles in the parish in the earlier part of the year.”