MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH REPORTS

Britain’s rapidly expanding Victorian towns and cities were insanitary with overcrowded dwellings, dirty water, and a lack of drainage and sewers. So it is no wonder that they very quickly became hotbeds for such deadly diseases as cholera, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid and typhus.

The 1848 Public Health Act gave powers to local authorities to establish local boards of health in England and Wales, and to set up water supplies, sewers and public