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6
the present year, they have had to go out and make enquiries from
house to house in order to find work to do.
Difference in
nature of
complaints.
Special totals.
Primary
Inspections.
Tenement
Houses and
Regulations.
Housing
Question not
solved.
The difference in numbers is not by any means the only noticeable
feature. Appreciable as this is, it is as nothing compared to the
difference in the seriousness of the cases they send in now. Not only
are serious nuisances becoming more rare, but a still more gratifying
feature is the fact that large numbers of these are already under notice
from your staff prior to their receipt from Oxford House.
Before proceeding to the consideration of the details of general
work, perhaps two or three totals may be of interest, and may not
perhaps appear so " dry '' if dealt with apart from mere tables of figures.
Firstly, our primary inspections may be worthy of note. In
this would be included all first visits or new cases,—House-to-House,
Complaints, Trade Inspections, Infectious Cases, Workshops, and
Outworkers, &c.,—and the total of these visits for the year amount
to the large number of 9,851. Of these, no less than 1,626 were to
Factories and Workshops, and 1,88r to Outworkers Homes, or
Domestic Workshops, and when it is considered that only a very
few years back this duty was to all intents and purposes not even
attempted, it forms a good guide as to the standard of sanitary
supervision now exercised.
Anqther item of interest may be found in the inspection of
Registered or Tenement Houses. The number of Houses on the
Register is 455, and the visits made to these, and Houses likely for
Registration, were 1,088. Numbers of these were made at early
morning or late in the evening.
I do not suppose that anyone is now quite so foolish as to
believe all the exaggerated nonsense that a few years ago was talked
about the value of Tenement House Regulations, when some of our
good friends were apparently trying hard to deceive themselves that
even the great Housing Question itself was well on the way to
solution by means of such Regulations.
Apart from this somewhat far-drawn idea, these Regulations do