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teachers, 261; and boys, from two institutions, to the number of 1,670; making a gross total of
83,028 bathers, compared with 92,781 in 1901-2. The falling off in washers, was 2,901 ; in
bathers, 9,753. The reasons assigned for this falling off, as regards the bathers, are the cold and
wet summer, the coronation festivities, which distracted public attention ; competition which
took away many bathers, from Kensal Town and Walham Green, and the provision of a swimming
bath at St. Paul's School. The falling off in the laundry department is attributable to the fact
that the establishment was closed for repairs for three weeks in August. As I have remarked in
former reports, for the majority of parishioners the site of the establishment is not sufficiently
central for bathers, and is too remote for use by would-be washers. The same objection would
apply to any single site in the borough. What is to be desiderated is the provision, in convenient
localities, of buildings, on a modest scale, to which the poor in the central and southern districts
might resort for laundry purposes.
CLEANSING OF PERSONS ACT.
This Act, passed in 1897, gives power to the sanitary authority to permit any person infested
with vermin to have the use of the apparatus which the authority may have provided for cleansing
the body and clothing, and authorises expenditure on buildings, appliances, and attendants that may
be required for the carrying out of the Act. Nominal effect was given to the Act soon after it
passed, by an arrangement with the Guardians, whereby cleansing and disinfecting apparatus at the
able-bodied workhouse, Mary-place, in the Potteries, was made available, on payment of a small fee,
by the late Vestry—an unsatisfactory arrangement still in force. Little use has been made of the
apparatus, owing possibly to ignorance of the arrangements on the part of the poor intended to be
benefited, and probably, to some extent, owing to the locality and ownership of the apparatus. In
the borough of St. Marylebone, a proper equipment having been provided, several thousand cleansing
operations are carried out in the course of the year; much to the comfort of dirty and verminous
persons, who, for the most part, come from an adjacent Salvation Army Shelter. The question of
providing a place for the purposes of the Act is engaging the attention of the Council. For
convenience of administration, and on grounds of economy, I recommended that a place for giving
effect to this Act should be provided in connection with the proposed disinfecting station and shelter,
but not at Wood-lane. The Council decided otherwise.
UNDERGROUND ROOMS ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED.
In a number of instances rooms " underground " were found to be illegally occupied in
various parts of the borough. The illegal occupation was in each case discontinued on the service
of a written intimation or a statutory notice.
OVERCROWDING.
Overcrowding is occasionally brought about by the action of railway companies, schoolboards,
etc., who are not required to provide for the rehousing of persons displaced by the demolition
of houses, provided that fewer than twenty houses are compulsorily acquired at any one time.
This subject was brought to the attention of the sanitary authorities in 1900 by the late Vestry of
St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, a suggestion having been made that the School Board should
be compelled to provide housing accommodation for persons displaced by their action ; the Vestry,
moreover, advocated an amendment of the Standing Order of the House of Commons, so that all
classes of" Promoters" should be required to make provision for rehousing, even when a smaller
number of houses than twenty is taken. It was overlooked that Parliament had dealt with the
subject, in the session of 1899, by bringing the School Board for London under the Standing Order,
as regards liability for rehousing persons displaced, a clause with this object having been inserted in
their Provisional Order Confirmation (London) Act, 1899 : the clause, moreover, was made
retrospective; it being provided therein that all houses or lands occupied by persons of the
labouring class, taken by the Board in the previous five years, should be regarded as acquired under
that Act. No houses appear to have been so acquired in the borough within that period, but the
subject is of interest to the Council in view of the demolitions shortly expected—at Southam-street
and Wornington-road, etc.—in connection with the intended widening of the Great Western
Railway in that locality, to which reference has already been made (page 86).
NUISANCE FROM GAS WORKS.
Complaints are occasionally received of nuisance from the gas works at Kensal Green—
a subject fully dealt with in the annual report for 1894 (page 166). There can be no doubt as to
the genuineness of the complaints, which receive confirmation from Willesden, the inhabitants of