THE SANITARY ASPECTS OF EMIGRATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3929, 19 September 1874, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE SANITARY ASPECTS OF EMIGRATION.

■; The reports issued hyMe City' Corporaltion on the, sanitary con&itioii of tHe.pertvv .of London, ;■ show,. says "a Home, paperpf that vessels; frequently: arrive in: the^K Thames and haul into"dock witlremigrantsX £ | from various ports of Europe, who are -v embarked at Hamburg, Rotterdam, Stet- :b tin, and other Baltic ports, and sent to -'< - London for transhipment to Australia; New Zealand, ' ami Vjther British Go- • lonies. These emigrants are some- ' times kept on board ship in the river,' •or the docks, for'several days/or are sent " to lodging-houses in the east end of Lon- : don; where they frequently remain for a . week or ten days before tne journeyis resumed. Having regard; to the fact .that these vessels often come from ports infected with, or suspected of cholera, the Sanitary Committee of the Corporation ■ have directed their medical officers' to ex- - amine all such complaints before the yes-' •'- ---sel hauls into dock, and to u-se all possible means to prevent the importation of epidemic diseases by way of the Thames It ; appears that , the: Emigration Board -": now represented by . the Board of Trade, have no : power over, or at, all events do nob recognise, emigrants who arrive in the United Kingdom: ior purposes of transhipment, so that, as - i incomers, the port sanitary authority ia ■ responsible for their sanitary condition. As, however, when cholera is epidemic- on the Continent, the difficulty/of detecting its presence in the incipient stage among . a crowd of immigrants is very great, it / would be very advantageous to have a large depot somewhere between Gravesend and Greenwich, in which all bucli - arriving in the Thames for transhipment might be housed during their short stay in England. The charge of establishing and maintaining such a depot would naturally fall upon the emigration agencies rather than upon^the Board of Trade or the port sanitary authority. A floating establishment might be provided or a large building utilised, as the old Brunswick at Blackwall. Some arrangement of this kind appears the more important because this system of sending over batches of emigrants from Baltio ports is likely to continue, and because, to quote from the report of the port medical ofhcer, " cholera is -fast beooming- ea* • demic on the Continent of Europe,"