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manner, that recurring nuisances can be dealt with satisfactorily.
Next to overcrowding, the unhealthiness of large towns is in a great
measure, due to accumulations of filth in all sorts of places. Dirty
walls and ceilings, foul closets, stagnant water in ill-paved yards,
decaying vegetable matter and such like, keep up a constant condition
of atmospheric impurity. In the open country effluvia of all
kinds are rapidly diluted and blown away, but in towns the effect of
the wind is checked by the buildings, and the stagnant foul air
poisons the inhabitants and runs up the death rate. In a model
district every house should be visited by a Sanitary Inspector at
least once in each year, but Mr. Foot estimates that with the staff
at his disposal a complete inspection of the parish will take five
years to accomplish.
The proportion of re-inspections (20,168) to abated cases (4,078)
appears to me much greater than it should be; six visits, five of
them re-inspections, seems an excessive expenditure of time and shoeleather
to get a nuisance abated, and points to defective powers of
persuasion or want of activity on the part of some members of the
staff. If I remember rightly, when Mr. Foot was a District Inspector,
he succeeded in getting nuisances abated by about three
visits per case on an average, and this is what ought to be accomplished;
however 1896 has been an exceptional year on account of
the acute condition of the drain and sewer question, and your
officers have frequently been obliged to deal tenderly with defective
conditions when they would have much preferred to adopt a more
determined attitude. Let us hope the dispute will soon be settled
one way or another, as at present the whole matter is on a most
unsatisfactory basis, and constitutes a real hindrance to sanitary
progress.
FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS.
No periodical supervision of workshops, as such, has been undertaken,
but trade premises of all kinds have been dealt with by the
inspectors, wherever discovered, in the ordinary course of their
duties. All premises complained of by H.M. Factory Inspectors,
have been visited and reported upon to the Committee, by whose
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