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that sound flour shall be made into bread under such conditions as
will preclude the admixture of filth of all kinds.
About the worst place to select for a bakehouse is the cellar beneath
a retail shop, yet more than a third of the bakehouses in the
Borough are so situated. These places are usually lighted and
ventilated by means of openings beneath the stall-board of the shop
above. The oven is commonly built beneath the footway of the
public road in front. To this there are two objections: first the
necessity of the baking room being in the most dusty portion of the
premises, and second the oven, which runs out beyond the footway,
is brought into dangerous proximity with the public sewer (which
may or may not be in a watertight condition); thus a very serious;
danger of contamination is incurred. Very often the floorboards of
the shop above form the ceiling of the bakehouse, with the result
that the dirt brought in by the footwear of the customers finds its
way between the boards and falls right on to the dough in the
troughs below. Moreover the stall-board openings not only admit
light and air, but also a plentiful supply of street dust, ordinarily
composed of road detritus, dried horse-dung, dogs' excrement, human
sputa, and other filthy abominations. Much of this dust gets mixed
up with the dough, and were it not for the fact that the temperature
at which bread is baked is destructive to most disease germs, epidemies
would certainly be spread by the agency of bread. Too
much faith, however, must not be placed on this sterilization by
heat, for bacteriologists have shewn that a variety of germs other
than those known to be associated with disease, may be cultivated
from the crumb of ordinary loaves.
Apart from the bread eater's point of view, we must take into consideration
the conditions under which those who are fated to work
long hours, in the hot foul atmosphere of such a cellar bakehouse as
I have described, carry on their employment. No one can question
the desirability of abolishing all such places, but unfortunately the
expense and inconvenience of this precludes the possibility of its
accomplishment suddenly. The legislature, in 1895, contented itself
with forbidding the future use of any underground premises for the