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annexed report. This Act, which lays the responsibility of
keeping a register of workshops, etc., on the local authority,
has led to an inspection of all such premises within the
borough that we have been able to discover. Under the
Public Health (London) Act it is necessary that all such
places shall be provided with suitable and sufficient sanitary
conveniences, and difficulty has arisen as to how far the
Committee are justified in going.
A workplace has been held to be a place where people
are employed; for instance, a builder's yard, a jobmaster's
yard and other places where men, although strictly speaking
they are employed there, are, for a greater part of their time,
at work elsewhere. In other cases, it happens that there is a
small room or shed used for the purpose of manufacturing,
where persons of each sex are employed. The workshop being
in connection with a dwelling-house, the female portion of the
workpeople have access to the closet in the house and the
males to the one outside in the yard. Personally, I think this
would be a sufficient arrangement, and as the sanitary
authority is left by the Act to be the judge, I have advised to
that effect, with the result that each case has been considered
on its merits.
There can be no question as to the overlapping of the
duties of the various Inspectors. Where females are employed
there will be three Inspectors visiting the premises. Miss
Bevan will go for the female portion, the corresponding male
Inspector will go for the male portion and the Factory
Inspector, whether male or female I know not, for both.
As will be seen below, there have been three persons
prosecuted for neglecting to send in lists of outworkers. It
can hardly be said that the sanitary authority were unduly
hard on the defendants, as they were written to three times
asking for the lists before the summonses were issued.
If, however, the Act should ever be re-cast, it is
necessary that some means should be provided of causing
employers to send a supplementary list of outworkers, in case
they should take on any fresh hands between the two specified
dates in February and August. They are under no obligation
to inform the district council of such outworkers, and if these
should be discharged before the next list has to be sent in
their names will never appear at all. The practical appli-