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166
the top of the walls and extending far up
the creek, words almost faied
the writer:
The one terrib le fact that occurred on the very brink of
this pestilent dam ought to have been a sufficient warning .
A whole fami ly of children - five in numb er ere here
destroyed by the scarlet fever epidemic . Four of them
were buried out of that house in one day .
With intensity and emotion the Daily News pleaded with the Public to take
warning before it was too late .
If an epidemic of smallpox or cholera
occurred,
it would be "Woe betide the filthy city of Hobarton'1•
From July 17 until October 18, the Daily News pub lished eight
more 'leading '
articles dealing with various aspects of Public Health,
including scavenging of the city, extra-mural interment , water supply and
the provision of fountains and baths,
nuisances .in the Rivulet,
unwh olesome and adulterated food and the like . 3
Much of the material
was repetitive, emphas izing again and again the connection between
cleanliness and health on the one hand, and dirt
and disease on the other:
exhortation, persuasion, ironical humour ,
scientific argument , appeal to
religious sentiment, even the recounting of revolting and gruesome details ,
were used to drive the lesson home ; certainly nothing was left to the
pub lic imagination .
To the stranger who saw only the best streets in
Hobart Town, the Daily News issued a challenge .
But let him drive into the bye-streets, where the dw ellings
of the poor may be seen; let him take a daily round with the
town missionaries in their house to house visitation of the
domici les of the labouring classes; let him accompany the
medical practitioners in their visits , at all hours and in
all seasons to the abodes of pestilence and disease; or let
him accompany the zealous minister of the Great Prototype,
whose mipsion was to go about doing good and whose doctrine
teaches us to visit the sick and the widows and the father less
in their afflictions ; and he will soon have amp le grounds to
pronounce an adverse opinion - and wonder how in so young, so
wealthy, so active a community the worst evils of the
old established, close packed cities of the Northern Hemisphere
could have grown up under the bright skies, genial influences
and ample space of the south.
The reforms advocated, whilst inferring the grimness of the
sanitary situation, were an illustration of the wide tent of Hall's
knowledge of the most advanced sanitary principles of the day .
Amongst
the numerous reforms he suggested were the provision of paid men with
carts, pipes , hoses and rakes to clean the vast accumulations of refus e
organic matters from every nook and cranny in the city;
the
3
See list of Hall's newspaper articles on Public Health in the
Bibliography.