View report page

92
Continued.

OFFENSIVE BUSINESSES.
The only business coming within the statutory description "offensive," other than that of
a slaughterer of cattle, carried on in the Borough, is that of a Fat extractor, at Tobin Street, in
the Potteries Notting-dale. In connexion with this factory, a formal complaint of nuisance
was received from a gentleman who owns many of the houses in the vicinity. With
the Chief Sanitary Inspector, I visited the premises on July 10th. The interior was
in an unsatisfactory condition, the atmosphere almost intolerably hot and stinking. I
reported the facts, and the Public Health Committee resolved to view, and did so in July,
when the premises were found in a clean, dry, and generally unobjectionable condition, but for the
sickening malodours clinging to everything about them. In September following a certificate
signed by 65 inhabitants of the neighbourhood was received, making formal complaint of the
nuisance. The Public Health (London) Act, 1891, was not named ; but obviously the certificate was
based on the provisions of Section 21 of that enactment. It was not the first time, by several, that
the inhabitants had in like manner invoked the aid of the Sanitary Authority in regard to this
matter, to which references have been made in my annual reports extending over many years. The
Sanitary Committee of the late Vestry, moreover, in more than one report, animadverted on the
nuisance; and, particularly, in a report dated 25th October, 1898, they observed that—
" It could not be questioned that, at times, smells of the most obnoxious character
emanate from the premises to the serious inconvenience, if not danger, of the inhabitants
of the houses in the immediate vicinity.*
The Committee expressed the opinion that the matter should be dealt with either by complaint
to the Petty Sessional Court, or by proceedings in the High Court. Proceedings were
ordered to be instituted in the Petty Sessional Court; but the action of the Vestry was forestalled
by the London County Council, whose proceedings proved abortive, under the circumstances set
out in my annual report for 1898 (page 94).
Three of the Sanitary Inspectors were deputed to keep observation on the premises, and
did so for some weeks in the autumn; but their reports did not appear to justify the institution of
proceedings; some of the inhabitants, moreover, expressed satisfaction with the improved state of
affairs brought about by the intervention of the Public Health Committee, and which seemed to
justify the impression that the nuisance was in a considerable measure caused by want of care in
the conduct of the business—as by allowing effluvia to escape, by opening of doors, and in
other ways, instead of compelling the discharge of them through the furnace by proper use of the
apparatus provided for the purpose. Such neglect may from one point of view be regarded as
pardonable, for the conditions under which the employes work, when the doors are closed, must
be almost intolerable. In the result no proceedings were instituted. The premises are still kept
under observation, and it will be interesting to observe whether, in the ensuing summer, exercise of
the same care as in the autumn of last year will suffice to protect the inhabitants from a recurrence
of the nuisance.