FILTHY streets and unsanitary dwellings were among the reasons Greenock continued to suffer epidemics of fever, smallpox and cholera during the 1800s.

The town’s growing prosperity as a port also posed a problem.

R M Smith’s ‘The History of Greenock’ mentions that in 1806 a contagious fever was introduced by Russian sailors on board a boat brought into harbour. The malady spread and caused many deaths among residents.

Aside from adding to the health difficulties which started on land, the onus and expenditure in cases of infectious disease occurring in connection with Clyde shipping was laid on the Greenock authorities.

Calls for assistance were rejected for many years and the matter was not resolved until 1893.

Two years earlier, an appeal to the Secretary for Scotland stated: “The whole supervision of the inward-bound shipping of the Clyde ports is practically imposed on Greenock, and probably no port in the kingdom is in a better position to protect itself from the introduction of infectious disease.

“There can be no doubt that Glasgow and Port Glasgow owe their exceptional immunity from disease imported by shipping to the excellent arrangements of the Local Authority of Greenock, but these arrangements are costly, troublesome and highly responsible.

“It has been said that the best solution of the difficulty, as a final arrangement, would be a general Sanitary Authority for the Clyde ports, but meantime Glasgow, Port Glasgow and Bowling should compensate Greenock by a small tonnage rate for the vast services now gratuitously given.

“Mr J B Russell, sanitary officer, Glasgow, has on many occasions expressed his sense of the obligations Glasgow is in to the sanitary officials of Greenock for their thorough and intelligent of treatment of outbreaks on board ship.” By the Greenock Corporation Act of 1893 Parliament allowed the local authority the right to recover the cost of treatment to the extent of £12 per patient of cases of infectious diseases on ships for Glasgow, Govan, Renfrew, Paisley, Bowling, Dumbarton, Helensburgh and Port Glasgow, and from Partick and Clydebank when piers or harbours were constructed there.