THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SANITARY OFFICER
Published in Issue 2 (March/April 2023), Volume 31By Joanne Rothwell
Sanitary officers were among the frontline workers of the nineteenth century and were key in preventing the spread of infectious diseases and improving the health and welfare of the population of Ireland. The Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, consolidated earlier legislation. According to Desmond Roche in Local government in Ireland (1982):
‘This Act was drafted under the influence of the theories of the causes of disease current at the time. Its remedy against the spread of infectious diseases was the creation of clean surroundings by eliminating nuisances, cleansing infected premises, providing water supplies, drainage and proper burial grounds, reducing overcrowding in houses, destroying unsound food, regulating slaughter houses and dealing with infectious diseases in hospitals.’
There had been previous legislation on providing towns with water, establishing fever hospitals, preventing contagious diseases and promoting public health. In fact, the 1878 Act was an update of the Public Health Act of 1874. Among the collections of local authority archives services are minutes of the sanitary committees, some of them commencing with that earlier Act in 1874. These records hold a wealth of valuable information not just on disease and sanitation but also on living conditions, particularly for those living in poverty.
Above Left: Return of infectious diseases for Tallow Dispensary District, 19 August 1910. Above Right: : ‘Certificate of Medical Practitioner’ for a case of enteric fever in Cappoquin, 13 July 1914.
The work of the sanitary committee combined medical assessments and analysis with the development of local infrastructure to combat the spread of disease and improve public health. The team included an executive sanitary officer, sanitary officer, sanitary sub-officers and, in some cases, a consulting sanitary officer. In Waterford City the role of executive sanitary officer was held by the town clerk, the sanitary officer was the borough high sheriff and the sub-officers were the borough constables. The consulting sanitary officer was Dr De Landre.
In Dungarvan Urban District Council the sanitary committee minutes begin in 1874. Having settled the salary of the dispensary doctor, Mr Henry Anthony, at £10 per annum as urban sanitary officer and inspector of nuisances, and that of Thomas Walsh as sub-sanitary officer at £5 per annum, the committee set to work on dealing with the many issues of public health in the community. The sanitary sub-officers visited the sites of reported nuisances and disease, and their reports provide an insight into the living conditions of the time. On 11 June 1875 the sanitary officer reported that ‘cess pools, bad sewerage and other nuisances were at the rear of houses in Bridge Street and Victoria Lane, Abbeyside, the property of Sir J.N. Humble. Ordered that the landlord be noticed to abate the nuisance.’
In August 1881 in Waterford City Dr De Landre and the high constable, James Mahony, reported to the sanitary committee on houses at the corner of Little Patrick Street
‘… from which the first cases of fever in the present epidemic were removed to Hospital. These houses are let to tenements and considerably over 100 people adults and children live in these. Two rooms are allotted to each family one a sleeping compartment and the other is reserved for kitchen purposes … The trade followed by nearly all the occupants is shoemaking and what should be the kitchen is also the workshop and from the nature of their business the air is always heavy and offensive in the kitchen.’
The assessments of the sanitary officers could be quite blunt. On 15 April 1889 in Dungarvan James C. Holland, medical officer, wrote of one house visited: ‘It is extremely filthy. And further, these people stable a donkey there. And all the inmates appear to be strangers to clean water.’ The most common issues highlighted in the records were in relation to ‘heaps of manure’, ‘filthy ash pits’, ‘cess pools’, ‘bad sewerage’ and ‘poor drainage’. Poor sanitation and overcrowding were huge problems in urban and rural areas.
These poor conditions were also being shown in the records to affect the health of the population, and the outbreaks of diseases were recorded and followed up to trace their cause and origin. Dispensary doctors provided returns of illnesses and outbreaks of disease, which were then followed up by the sanitary officers to discover the source of an outbreak. In Dungarvan an outbreak of enteric fever in 1901 resulted in the medical inspector from the Local Government Board, Dr Browne, reporting on the defective sewerage in the town, which was held to be the cause of the outbreak. This led to the Board granting the loan required to provide a new sewerage scheme for Dungarvan in 1901. The town engineer, Michael Beary, produced a set of maps for this new drainage scheme, providing a detailed colour map of the town which marked the proposed new pipes and at the same time recorded the streets in 1901.
The Local Government Board was also able to warn the network of sanitary committees of possible outbreaks of epidemics and enable them to start preparations to prevent or limit them. In 1892 the Board issued guidelines on a possible outbreak of cholera to all sanitary areas, and in March 1893 Dr Browne, the local government inspector, attended the sanitary committee in Waterford City to communicate the arrangements that should be made in view of the probable approach of cholera.
These detailed accounts of infectious diseases, housing conditions, health and the provision of water and sewerage infrastructure throughout Ireland are a rich source of information about life in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The sanitary officers’ reports identify families that as short-term tenants in poor tenement houses would not be recorded in rate books. They enable researchers to investigate the landlords to whom notices were served and the quality of the housing available. A search through these records can reveal some fascinating stories yet to be told.
Joanne Rothwell is Waterford City and County Archivist.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.