A Different Somerville: The City in the Early Twentieth Century as Seen Through Board of Health Records

The records in this exhibit came to the archives via the City Hall attic.  The Historic Preservation Office safeguarded the letters and reports Laurence Howard, Executive Clerk until they were delivered to the Archives in the summer of 2013.  These records were inventoried and scanned by Simmons College intern, Rachel Stanton.

Laurence Howard was the Executive Clerk of Somerville from the 1900s to the 1930. Just like today the Board of Health oversaw a wide range of activities to protect public health.  However, the conditions in Somerville, the state of medical care, and national issues were very different.

If you can't read the text in the document, you can click on the image to see a larger version, and to see full documents when there are multiple pages.