by Keith Lewis-Jones
Dr. Thomas Dyke
Plaque sited on the fence of the disabled car park at Swan Street, Merthyr Tydfil
Thomas Dyke (1816-1900) was born in Merthyr and played an active part in its public life for the greater part of a century. Trained at Guys and St. Thomas’s hospitals he was parish surgeon for various Merthyr districts and for the Dowlais Iron Company.
He was appointed Merthyr’s Medical Officer of Health in 1865.
The improvements in water supply, sewerage, sanitation, inspection, and housing, most of them under his guidance, meant that by the end of the century Merthyr’s average death rate was less than the average for other industrial centres and the death rate from infantile diarrhoea for most of 1865-1900 was the lowest of any town in the United Kingdom.
Dyke was also a prominent Freemason, a founder of the Merthyr subscription library and a keen advocate of town incorporation.
