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period to cleanse such house or any portion thereof, and, if so required,
to remove the wall-paper, and to take such other steps for the purpose
of destroying and removing vermin as the case may require.
Section 21 enacts that section 59 of the Public Health (London)
Act, 1891, "shall for the purposes" of the aforementioned sections
19 and 20, "extend and he applicable to the provision of means" for
giving effect to these "as if the said section were re-enacted herein
and in terras made applicable thereto."
Section 22 enables the Sanitary Authority to require the removal
or alteration of sanitary conveniences (urinals, etc.) accessible from
any street, if so placed or constructed as to be a nuisance or offensive
to public decency.
Section 23 enables the Sanitary Authority to enforce the removal
of a fixed ashpit where a moveable ashpit, "conforming with the
requirements of any by-law or order made under any statutory power
or authority in that behalf," shall have been provided.
Section 24 gives the Sanitary Authority power of entry if they
have reasonable cause to suppose any house, or part thereof, contains
filthy, dangerous, or unwholesome articles, requiring to be purified
(Section 19), or is "infested with vermin " (Section 20).
Section 48 enacts that any pecuniary penalty inflicted in
consequence of proceedings taken by a Sanitary Authority against any
person in respect of any offence under "Part VIII. (Ice-creams)" of
of the County Council's (General Powers) Act, 1902, shall he payable
and paid to such Sanitary Authority.
Part V. of the Act, dealing with "Tuberculosis of the Udder in
Cows," enables the County Council's veterinary surgeon to cause
any cow suspected by him to be suffering from that disease, to be
removed from any dairy farm, or cowshed, situate in the county, and,
after valuation, with a view to settling the amount of compensation
payable to the owner, to be slaughtered.
These provisions are important and some of them have definite
application in Finsbury. For instance in the poorer districts of the
Borough probably about 70 per cent, of the houses contain vermin,
but in the better parts not more than 10-20 per cent. Vermin
occurs mostly in wainscotting woodwork, floors, old wall papers and
bedding. Probably it would be correct to say that about half of
the articles disinfected in the steam disinfectors were infected with
vermin. Then again in a number of cases we have received com-