PLUMBER AS LIFE SAVER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7865, 29 July 1911, Page 11

PLUMBER AS LIFE SAVER

"■plumbers are often .the subject of more or less seemly jests, but in spite of th,e increased respect for sanitation it is doubtful whether it is generally realised what the plumber and the sanitary engineer have done for human life/' says Mr Chiozza Money, M.P. "I)r. John Robinson, the Birmingham Medical Officer of Health, recently pointed out that the Birmingham death rate had’fallen from 26 per 1,000 in 1851 to 12i per 1,000 in 1910. This means that if the 1851 death rate had obtained in 1910 there would hare been 12,000 more deaths recorded in Birmingham in 1910 than was actually .the case. It remains to add that the whole of the building trade, and not one branch of it alone, is intimately, connected with the death rate. 1 hope this will be increasingly realised when our national insurance scheme comes into operation. .Wo must not'be content merely to erect sanatoria to deal with consumptives. Tuberculosis is bred where there is not enough of c:r and sunshine, and any nation can get rid of tuberculosis by housing its people in well-built dwelling places, to which fresh air and sunshine have free access."