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Committee and Department. The reasons for such an alteration are
set out in the following report, which was adopted by the Vestry :—
Your Committee have given this subject their careful consideration, and
would like, in the first place, to remind the Vestry that the first Sanitary
Committee were appointed by the following resolution of the late Board of
Works, on the 27th of July, 1866:—
Resolved—That the Clerk direct circular letters of request to the
various Medical Officers of the district, as directed by the Order
of Council, and that the Committee appointed on the 19th day
of July instant, be appointed by this Board to act as a Committee,
under the 5th section of the Nuisance Removal Act, to consolidate
and amend the Nuisance Removal and Diseases Prevention
Acts, 1848 and 1849, and to put in force the several orders in
Council as occasion or circumstance may require.
The duties of the Committee at this time were confined to dealing with
the removal of nuisances and the execution of any order of the Privy Council
relating to epidemic disease.
From this date the duties of your Committee have gradually increased
under various Acts of Parliament passed by the Legislature, of which the
following are a few:—
An Act to amend the Removal of Nuisances, and the Prevention of
Diseases Acts, 1860.
The Sanitary Act, 1866.
The Sanitary Act, 1868.
The Sanitary Law Amendment Act, 1874.
The Infectious Disease Notification Act, 1889.
The Infectious Disease Prevention Act, 1889.
But in the year 1891, the Public Health Act was passed, and your
Sanitary Committee were reappointed to execute all the duties which fall
upon the Vestry under its provisions. It is almost unnecessary to state that
the functions of the Committee under the new legislation were very much
enlarged, and their character altered.
While in 1866 the work of the Committee might rightly be described as
sanitary work, in 1897 their duties include much that it would be incorrect
to describe under this term, instances of which are the Notification of
Disease and the Adulteration of Food and Drugs.