View report page

28
Medical Officers of Health Annual Report.
Sanitary
Operations.
The Table at the end of this Report shows
that a very large number of houses and premises
have been inspected during the year. A certain
number of these have been inspected as the result of
complaints on the part of the occupiers, but a considerable
number have been visited in the course of systematic house
to-house inspection. This systematic inspection has always
been an important part of the sanitary work in this
District, and, whilst mainly directed to the streets occupied
by the poorer classes where most nuisances are met with,
is intended, at longer or shorter intervals, to embrace the
whole area of the District. The Inspectors engaged in
this work are provided with registers containing columns
for entering the results of their observations as to the
number of occupants and overcrowding, cleanliness of the
different rooms and passages, condition of cisterns, waterclosets,
rain-water and waste-pipes and other fittings, state
of the house as to dryness and the drainage. No elaborate
testing of the drainage is undertaken unless there is complaint
made of bad smells or there appears to the Inspector
any special reason. Thus, it is seen, most valuable work
in the detecting and abating of nuisances is accomplished,
and records, which have year by year become more
complete and useful, have been accumulated, of the
sanitary condition of the whole District. It is with great
regret that we find that during the last few years less of
this systematic inspection has been carried out, and, indeed,
in some parishes it has been almost entirely in abeyance,
and this has been due to the enormous increase of the
work in other directions. Most careful attention, and
quite rightly, has been given to the supervision of the
construction of the drains of new houses, and this has
entailed a very great deal of work on the Inspectors who
have often to visit daily for weeks together a drain under
construction. It is consequently in those parts of the
District where most building is going on, that there has