|
|
||
|
|
HEALTH
Public Nuisances
Throughout the 19th century the Board of Health worked constantly to rid the city of public nuisances including unclean privies, dirty streets, unfit living quarters and standing water holes where disease-carrying insects bred. The Board of Health was responsible for tenement inspections for overcrowding and unsanitary conditions and for the enforcement of city codes including the 1855 provision of outside ventilation for all buildings. Periodic house to house inspections were made in those sections of the city where the most serious conditions existed. The House Drainage Division was organized in 1886. Registration and regulation of all persons engaged in the plumbing business remained the responsibility of the public health officials until 1951 when it was transferred to the newly created Department of Licenses and Inspections.
Dairies and slaughterhouses
Dairies and slaughterhouses were under constant sanitary supervision by Board of Health staff. Inspections were made of the premises and the meat or milk that was being prepared for sale. Unhealthy products were condemned and excluded from markets. In 1889, the City Council appointed a milk inspector and permitted the Board of Health to print in two city daily newspapers the names of all persons selling adulterated milk. The Division of Meat and Cattle Inspection was established in 1905.
Slaughterhouse on Westminster Avenue in Philadelphia, 1909: exterior and interior views.
Privies
Improper maintenance of privies or outhouses was a constant source of hazardous health conditions. Letters of complaint were received daily by the Board of Health. Most were from city residents seeking help against public nuisances such as a neighbor's unclean privy. In response to such complaints, the city notified and required the offender to make corrections. Board of Health privy well measurers also inspected and attempted to correct unsanitary conditions by removing debris and providing a treatment of lime.
a) Privy rules sign, 1915.
b) Filthy Philadelphia privy, 1909.
c) Department of Public Health exhibition displaying proper modern and sanitary bathrooms, 1937.
Rats
Throughout the 19th century the Board of Health fought against unhealthy environmental conditions in the city especially those which harbored rats and other disease-carrying pests. In 1912, the Bureau of Health assigned ten inspectors to serve on the rat patrol to examine rats for the presence of bubonic plague. When none of the 5,000 rats examined in 1914 tested positive for the plague, the program was discontinued.
Two views of the Bureau of Health rat receiving station located on Delaware Avenue near the city dock, September 1914.
Rat control poster, 1914.
This Department of Pubic Health and Charities poster urged the people of Philadelphia to rat-proof their buildings and turn in any rats trapped. The Department's Bureau of Health Rat Patrol offered two cents for dead rats and five cents for live ones.
Flies
This 1918 poster served as a tool to educate the public to the menace of the common housefly and the need to eliminate it and the unsatisfactory garbage disposal practices that attracted it. Improper garbage disposal by Philadelphia's citizens was a city health problem throughout the 19th and early 20th century. The Board of Health recommended an ordinance be created which would require the use of covered water-tight cans for the storage and removal of all trash.
Note: the frames of this poster are displayed over a number of pages for better legibility. Follow the link in the image below, and then follow the links below the photographs to proceed through the frames in the order that they appear in the poster.
Swat that Fly! Bureau of Health poster, 1918.
