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268
19111
DISTRICT INSPECTION.
The largest portion of the work of the Public Health Department devolves
on the District Inspectors, for it is their duty not only to inspect all those
places enumerated in Table CXXXVI,, but also to make enquiries respecting
the cases of infectious disease, whether notified by the medical profession,
under the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, or by the teachers of the
London County Council schools by order of that body. They are also required
to undertake the house to house inspection of the borough as required by the
provisions of the Housing and Town Planning Act, while they are also the
persons on whom devolve the duty of making enquiries (such as they are)
respecting p???lmonary tuberculosis, ophthalmia neonatorum, and other diseases
notifiable either by an Order of the Local Government Board or the London
County Council. And, finally, they have to make enquiries under the Notification
of Births Act, although naturally they make no attempt, nor would they
be allowed, to instruct mothers as to the rearing of their infants.
Of course no man can make more than a certain number of visits in his
usual working day, and as there is no reason to suppose that, hitherto, each
has not done a fair day's work, but every reason to suppose that he has, it is
clear that the additional duties cast on the staff by modern legislation can only
be undertaken by neglecting their sanitary proper work, to perform duties for
some of which they come very inadequately equipped, and which can only be
efficiently undertaken by highly trained women. The views of the Medica'
Officer of Health on these matters are so well known to the Public Health
Committee, and, indeed, to the Council, that he will not reiterate them.
Altogether 66,466 inspections and calls were made to the various premises
specified in Table CXXXVI., of which 5,980 related to separate houses. To
these separate houses they subsequently paid 55,298 visits. They also made
134 inspections of places where ice creams are made, 1,661 to milk shops, 419
to stables, 1,393 to yards, 88 to manure depots, 188 to vacant lands and courts,
771 to public house urinals, 5 to houses in respect to which certificates under
the Customs and Inland Revenue Acts were required, 7 to houses respecting
the water supply, and 355 inspections on Saturday evenings, which entailed
many thousand visits to shops, stalls and markets, where food of all sorts is
sold. They also made 161 observations of factory chimneys issuing black
smoke. This is a long tale of work, which on the whole was admirably done.
A synopsis of it is set out on p. 270.