EDITORIAL – Redcar Public Health & Local Boards

Accreditation, the Redcar and Saltburn-by-the-Sea Gazette 20/05/1870.

REDCAR PUBLIC HEALTH & LOCAL BOARDS
(Editorial)

            There exists in Redcar an anomaly so strange that but for the truth thereof we would fain believe it impossible. The case may be briefly stated thus :- When the “Public Health Act” was applied to Redcar a very material part of the place was left out of the district, and this not because the part so left out, needed the surveillance of the Board of Health less than any other part of the parish, but simply because an old ecclesiastical decision, at some remote period of history, had arbitrarily severed an isolated plot of ground at the east end of the place from the parish of Marske, and added it to the parish of Upleatham. Now this plot of ground at the east end of Redcar, is a continuation of High Street, separated only by the cross streets of Church Street, and Clarendon Street: and it contains not only good lodging houses, but also private residences of some of the principal inhabitants, besides a number of cottages in the Back Lane, parallel to the South side of High Street. This division of Redcar into the “Upleatham part.” and the “Redcar part,” has led to an unpleasant and jealous feeling between the two divisions which would never have existed at the district of the Local Board been, at first start, properly constituted. It is obvious enough that if it was necessary to apply the “Public Health Act” to Redcar at all, it was equally necessary in one part as a mother, irrespective of the parish to which any particular part might happen to belong. Nevertheless, on a recent occasion when a deputation from the Local Board waited on the inhabitants from the inhabitants of the “Upleatham part” of Redcar, for the purpose of asking them to have their district United to that of the Board, a general unwillingness was expressed, and the attempt to remedy the evil failed, because the consent of the majority is needed before the provisions of the Act can be applied. Now the question suggests itself, what is the use of a Local Board of Health? Is it to be looked upon as a nuisance? Or had our legislators. Some regard to the health and well-being of the people when the Act was passed. It cannot be doubted that the latter was the case and that the application of the Act to particular places is designed to secure efficient drainage, cleanliness, and whatever tends to the promotion of health of the inhabitants.

            The chief benefits resulting to Redcar from the application of the “Public Health Act” have been efficient drainage, and excellent supply of the purist water (the water drawn from wells be brackish), conveyed in pipes from Upleatham, a distance of four miles, improvements in the streets, and a general prevention of nuisances. Of course, all these have not been affected without cost, and it must be said that in the early days of the Board’s administration, a proper value was not always secured for the outlay. Nevertheless, the game to Redcar, resulting from the action of the Local Board, has been considerably more than will be readily confessed by those whose only object is to “keep down the rates.” HU economy is not only desirable but necessary, but it is unwise to sacrifice the public good to a needless parsimony; for a judicious outlay in public improvements in any watering place will pay in the longer run, and we greatly regret that the inhabitants of the Upleatham quarter do not see that their interests and the interests of Redcar generally are bound up together; and what benefits or deteriorates one has the same influence to a greater or less degree on the other. It is for this reason that the present Board desired to include the whole of Redcar in their district so as, if possible to secure to the whole town. The effectual drainage, supply of water, and other sanitary conditions, which are not only conducive but necessary to health.