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42
1911]
places of the same size, although with less density of population, and which are,
unlike it, coterminous with rural areas, such a record as that described is
wonderful.
And let it be added that what has happened in Islington is happening
in other metropolitan boroughs, for happily for Londoners, this borough does
not hold a monopoly of the good results that accrue from the vigilant, but just,
application of the laws relating to public health to insanitary conditions, and
as a consequence the great metropolitan city—called in legal document a county
—stands to-day unrivalled among the great capital cities of the world for its
health.
We hear a great deal from time to time of what the County Council has
done for the health of London. Of course it, not forgetting its predecessor
the Metropolitan Board of Works, has done a great deal, and no one but a
fool can fail to recognise the fact. It has provided parks, it has given us a
magnificent main drainage system, and it has induced Parliament to pass some
useful sanitary legislation ; all of which could only be effected by a central
body acting for the congeries of local bodies, known as Metropolitan Borough
Councils, which, as separate entities, could not so easily provide these things.
But nearly all the work of a sanitary character, which comes within the purview
of provincial borough councils, has been done by the local sanitary authorities
of London, to whom the chief praise is due for the present magnificent
state of health of the metropolis. The County Council has, however,
invariably encouraged the sanitary authorities to do their duty, and in one or
two cases has even spurred them on to a fuller sense of their obligations to
the community, and in other ways also has effected useful work ; but, nevertheless,
the great fact remains that the magnificent health which London
now enjoys is due mainly to the efforts of the late Vestries, who, between
1891, when the Public Health (London) Act was passed—for there was a
great awakening of the public conscience at this period—and 1900, when the
Metropolitan Borough Councils came into being, laid the foundations of the
hard-working public health departments, as we know them to-day, of which
the metropolitan boroughs are so justly proud, and which they generally
maintain at a high level of excellence. When discussing this subject there
is a temptation to print m parallel columns the Public Health Acts administered
by the Metropolitan Borough Councils and those administered by the County
Council. To do so would be to expose the fallacy that the London County
Council is a great sanitary authority, for in the one case the Acts are many, in
the other few. Unfortunately when the healthy condition of London is