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112
The inspectors take the houses street by street, and record in
each case upon sheets devised for the purpose, the date of inspection,
the address of the premises, the name and address of
the owner or agent, the number of families occupying, the total
number of rooms, the rooms occupied, empty, and overcrowded,
the sanitary defects for notice and amendment, and the action
taken.
These sheets containing this information are laid upon the
table at each meeting of the Public Health Committee and bound
at the end of the year.
In many offices too much time is spent by the staff in locating
and amending defects of drainage, in standing by the trench
and watching the actual operation of repairing and reconstructing
drains.
In districts with well.considered building and drainage bye.
laws, this drainage work should by now have become so regulated
and standardised that it might well be relegated to second
place.
The urgent and insistent sources of discomfort and ill.health
are centred no less in the home, no less in the living and sleeping
rooms than in defects of the drainage system.
It is considered that the systematic inspection of 10 houses per
week is a desirable number for each inspector. This would
enable 2,000 houses to be done every year. Adopting. this estimate
all the houses in the Borough will be inspected in the course of
six years.
Systematic house to house inspection makes some demand upon
the resource and initiative of the staff, and is a sound gauge of
the sanitary alertness of the officers, and of the energetic administrative
activity of the department.
The readiness with which tenement houses are presented for
registration is also another excellent criterion of the same kind.
In 1910, 1,355 houses were inspected as a result of systematic
visitation. The numbers for preceding years were: 1901, 1,746;
1902, 1,501; 1903, 1,447; 1904, 1548; 1905, 2,250; 1906, 1,341;
1907, 806 ; 1908, 534; 1909, 798.