Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Saturday 31 December 1927

Health Statistics.

Wombwell M.O. and Years 1926 and 1927.

Startling figures bearing on the relationship between mining conditions and public health are made in a statement issued as a New Year’s message by Dr. J. C. Pickup, Medical Officer to the Wombwell U.D.C.

Dr.Pickup summarises vital statistics for the two years 1926 and 1927, and mentions that there has been an increase of 25 per cent, in the local death-rate. He points out that in 1926 there was a fine summer, a mild winter, a clear atmosphere (due to the pits being stopped), and miners were able to lead open-air life.

Those factors have not obtained in 1927. They had wet, sunless .summer, a more severe winter, the atmosphere has been polluted with smoke, and the miners are getting miserably low wages.” Therein lay the cause of the increased death rate.

The doctor adds: I afraid we cannot get back during the coming year to the 1926 figures. May the wages of the miners soon increase.”

Dr. Pickup also gives the information that the local birth-rate shows a further decline, and that the rate is now less than half what it was 20 years ago.

Dealing with affairs of public health generally. Dr. Pickup mentions two steps of progress made in Wombwell during 1927. One is the establishment of a Grade A milk farm, and the other the installation of an artificial light clinic. The Council have made application to the Ministry for permission to give treatment to non-tubercular adults, and it is anticipated that in the near future such permission will be riven, subject to medical recommendation.

In the course of his statement, Dr. Pickup warns the public that the large number of unvaccinated people may result in a recurrence of the smallpox epidemic from which the district has been free since October last.